
GLADSTONE 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



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\ 



A SHORT LIFE OF 
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 



WITH EXTRACTS FROM HIS SPEECHES 
AND WRITINGS 



BY 

CHARLES H. JONES 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1907 



'Hks-c-.^ 



\ LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
I TVo CoDles Received 
« APR 30 1907 
A Cooynirtit Entry 

CLASS /-\ XXc, No. 

COPY B. ' 



COPYRIGHT, 1880, 1907, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



PREFACE. 



In the long roll of English statesmen and 
party leaders there is none, probably, who has 
won such cordial sympathy and esteem from the 
American public as Mr. Gladstone. Our own 
political struggles are so absorbing and exhausting 
that in general we have .little interest to spare for 
those electoral contests which occasionally disturb 
the quiet of European countries ; but the 1879- 
'80 " campaign " in Great Britain aroused an ex- 
citement among our more intelligent classes 
which was only less intense than that which was 
seething in England itself, and here, as there, 
the interest centred around the stalwart figure of 
Mr. Gladstone. Here, as in Europe, his splendid 
triumph was felt to be something more than the 
victory of one party or " chieftain " over another 
— a triumph far-reaching in its consequences, and 



4 PREFACE. 

calculated to "strengthen the friends of pure 
popular government all over the world." 

At the moment when this great career reached 
its culminating phase, it seemed to the author 
that a concise popular account of its various 
stages might prove interesting, and could hardly 
fail to prove instructive. In the following pages 
the aim has been, not so much to trace with 
minute precision each successive step, as to 
furnish material for a fairly accurate general 
estimate of Mr. Gladstone's varied labors as 
statesman, orator, and author; and to portray 
as graphically as we may that noble and opulent 
personality which lies behind them all. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB 

I. Introductory . . . . .7 

II. Birth, Childhood, and Education . . 10 

III. In Parliament . . . . .20 

IV. In and Out of Office ... 40 
V. The Prisons of Naples . . . .59 

VI. Chancellor of the Exchequer . . 66 

VII. The Crimean War . . . .78 

VIII. Studies in Homer .... 90 

IX. In a Liberal Ministry . . . .98 

X. The Reform Bills of 1866-'67 . .113 

XL Electoral Struggle over the Irish Church 

Question . . . . .181 

XII. "The Golden Age of Liberalism" . . 142 

XIII. Reaction and Retirement . . .159 

XIV. The Eastern Question . . .176 
' XV. Electoral Campaign of 1879-'80 . . 197 

XVI. Qualities as an Orator . . , 212 

XVII. Qualities as a Party Leader . . . 227 

XVIII. Qualities as an Author . , . 232 

XIX. Personal Traits . . • • . 244 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 



INTRODUCTORY, 



At a time when the public everywhere seems 
to be settling down upon the conviction that there 
is something in *^ politics" which tends naturally 
and inevitably to sear the conscience and blunt the 
fine edge of personal integrity, it is peculiarly in- 
structive and encouraging to contemplate the ca- 
reer of Mr. Gladstone. In the record of that career 
we may study the example of a man who from his 
earliest youth has breathed the atmosphere of 
politics, and from the dawn of his manhood has 
lived amid the thickest tumults of party struggle; 
yet whose purity of motive and elevation of char- 
acter have never been so much as questioned, who 
could never be tempted to sacrifice conviction to 
expediency, whose faith in principles has steadily 
preserved him from the easy compliances and com- 
promises of ordinary political usage, and whose 



8 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

conscientiousness is so supreme and extreme 
that it has sometimes seemed to imperil that 
clearness of view and promptitude of action which 
are among the most indispensable qualifications of 
the administrative statesman. What was said of 
him by Mr. Kinglake at the period of the Crimean 
War might be applied with equal truth to the 
whole of that career which is now drawing toward 
its honored close : *' If he was famous for the splen- 
dor of his eloquence, for his unaffected piety, and 
for his blameless life, he was celebrated far and 
wide for a more than common liveliness of con- 
science. He had once imagined it to be his duty to 
quit a government, and to burst through long ties of 
friendship and gratitude, by reason of a thin shade 
of difference on the subject of white or brown 
sugar. It was believed that, if he were to commit 
even a little sin, or to imagine an evil thought, he 
would instantly arraign himself before the dread 
tribunal which awaited him within his own bosom; 
and that, his intellect being subtle and microscopic, 
he would be likely to give his soul a very harsh 
trial, and treat himself as a great criminal for 
faults too minute to be visible to the naked eyes 
of laymen. His friends live in dread of his virtues, 
as tending to make him whimsical and unstable, 
and the practical politicians, perceiving that he 
was not to be depended upon for party purposes, 
and was bent upon none but lofty objects, used to 
look upon him as dangerous — used to call him 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

behind his back a good man — a good man in the 
worst sense of the term." It will be observed that 
this passage is colored by a sentiment which is not 
altogether one of admiration — the man who carries 
conscience into public life is sure to seem '* im- 
practicable " to those who are inclined to repudiate 
its restraints ; but to the general public, we think, 
the most interesting lesson of Mr. Gladstone's life 
is the proof which it affords that sensiblity of con- 
science and disinterestedness of character are not 
incompatible with a brilliantly successful career 
in practical politics. 

Another aspect of Mr. Gladstone's career, 
which renders it peculiarly interesting, is the fact 
that it summarizes and reflects with unusual fidel- 
ity the leading features of that unexampled period 
of intellectual ferment and changing opinions in 
the midst of which it has been passed. From 
being *' the rising hope of the stern and unbend- 
ing Tories " of a generation ago (as Macaulay 
called him at the outset of his career), Mr. Glad- 
stone has traversed the whole vast interval which 
separated these from the most advanced liberal 
opinions of our own times, and has become one of 
the greatest practical reformers whose name has 
appeared in the annals of British legislation. To 
trace the gradual steps of this change of opinion 
and sentiment is to see in operation the most 
powerful of those intellectual and social forces 
that are transforming the modern world. 



10 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

II. 

BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, Al^D EDUCATION". 

Lancashire has had the honor of furnishing 
to the British Parliament the three greatest ora- 
tors that have shed luster upon its recent annals 
— Gladstone, Bright, and the late Lord Derby. 
The greatest of these, William Ewart Glad- 
stone, was born in Liverpool on the 29th of 
December, 1809. By his mother's side, accord- 
ing to Sir Bernard Burke, he has in his veins the 
blood of Henry III of England, and Robert 
Bruce of Scotland ; but he himself has never 
laid claim to such an august lineage, and has 
always declared himself proud to be in all respects 
a representative of that sturdy middle class which 
has ever constituted the bone and sinew of his 
country's greatness. Another fact in which he 
takes pride is that on both sides he is of Scotch 
descent. Referring to this in 1865, in response 
to an address from the Parliamentary Reform 
Union, in the Glasgow Trade Hall, he said : 
" If Scotland is not ashamed of her sons, her 
sons are not ashamed of Scotland ; and the mem- 
ory of the parents to whom I owe my being com- 
bines, with various other considerations, to make 
me glad and thankful to remember that the blood 
which runs in my veins is exclusively Scottish." 

The family name, which can be traced back in 



BIRTH, CHILDnOOD, AND EDUCATION. H 

legal documents to the year 1621, appears to have 
undergone several changes in recent times. It was 
Gledstanes or Gladstanes, until the grandfather of 
the Liberal statesman, a corn merchant of Leith, 
changed it to Gladstones, and it was not until 
1835 that his father was legally authorized to 
drop the final letter ; so that Mr. Gladstone was 
twenty-six years old and a member of Parliament 
before he was entitled to the name which he has 
since rendered famous throughout the world. 

His father, John Gladstone, removed in early 
life from Leith to Liverpool, where he became one 
of the most prosperous and enterprising mer- 
chants of the place, extending his commercial 
operations to all parts of the world. His firm 
**were among the earliest traders with Russia, 
and they snatched at the East India trade when 
the monopoly of the old East India Company was 
broken down. But their principal business was 
with the West Indies, where John Gladstone had 
large sugar plantations — a circumstance which, 
as we shall see, had a great deal to do with mold- 
ing the early political career of his illustrious 
son. " It is not the most pleasing feature of Eng- 
lish social life that those who have risen to opu- 
lence and position by trade are usually ashamed 
of the fact, and not indisposed to conceal it. Mr. 
Gladstone, of course, is incapable of any such 
ignoble sentiment, and in 1872, while Prime Min- 
ister of England, took occasion to say (in an ad- 



12 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

dress delivered at the Liverpool Collegiate Insti- 
tute) : "I know not why commerce in England 
should not have its old families, rejoicing to be 
connected with commerce from generation to gen- 
eration. It has been so in other countries ; I 
trust it will be so in this country. I think it a 
subject of sorrow, and almost of scandal, when 
those families, who have either acquired or recov- 
ered station and wealth through commerce, turn 
their backs upon it, and seem to be ashamed of it. 
It certainly is not so with my brother or with me. 
His sons are treading in his steps, and one of my 
sons, I rejoice to say, is treading in the steps of 
my father and my brother." 

Mr. John Gladstone prosecuted his commercial 
enterprises to such good purpose that he was able 
to make comfortable provision for each of his 
seven sons as they came of age ; but he was also 
remarkable for combining great business ability 
and zeal with a keen interest m public affairs, and 
with something of the graces and amenities of liter- 
ary culture. In the local affairs of Liverpool he 
took an active and prominent part, and to his 
efforts much of its ever-increasing prosperity 
was due. In politics, also, he took an active inter- 
est. '* When, in 1812," says Mr. Lucy, " Canning 
fought a famous election in Liverpool, John Glad- 
stone threw himself heart and soul into the advo- 
cacy of the cause of the great minister. He ad- 
dressed public meetings on his behaK, and it was 



BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND EDUCATION. 13 

from the balcony of his house in Rodney Street 
that Mr. Canning spoke to the enthusiastic crowd 
who, as the result of the election, hailed him Mem- 
ber for Liverpool. There was in the house at the 
time a little boy destined to fill a larger space in 
history even than Canning. William Ewart Glad- 
stone was in his third year at this time, and doubt- 
less from some upper window looked out with 
wondering eyes on the turbulent crowd, and heard 
the Minister talking of Catholic Emancipation and 
other strange matters. In fact, we have his per- 
sonal testimony on this interesting point. On the 
29th December, 1879, on the occasion of his reach- 
ing his seventieth year, Mr. Gladstone received at 
Hawarden a deputation of Liverpool gentlemen 
who brought hearty congratulations and a costly 
present. In the course of his acknowledgment 
the right honorable gentleman said : * You have 
referred to my connection with Liverpool, and it 
has happened to me singularly enough to have the 
incidents of my personality, the association of my 
personality, if I may so speak, curiously divided 
between the Scotch extraction, which is purely 
and absolutely Scotch as to every drop of blood in 
my veins, and, on the other hand, a nativity in 
Liverpool, which is the scene of my earliest recol- 
lections. And very early those recollections are, 
for I remember, gentlemen, what none of you 
could possibly recollect : I remember the first 
election of Mr. Canning in Liverpool.' " 



14 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

At a later period, owing probably to the in- 
fluence of Mr. Canning, Mr. John Gladstone pre- 
sented himself as a candidate for Woodstock, a 
pocket borough of the Marlborough family ; and 
subsequently represented Lancaster and other con- 
stituencies, being, altogether, a member of the 
House of Commons for nine years. He was in the 
House at tlie same time with his son, and must have 
listened to many of his earlier efforts in Parlia- 
mentary oratory. ^' In 1845, Sir Robert Peel, part- 
ly in recognition of his own merit, but, doubtless, 
in compliment to the brilliant young colleague 
who was the bright particular star of his ministry, 
made the elder Gladstone a baronet. Six years 
later, in the year of the Great Exhibition, Sir John 
died, full of years and honors and riches. His 
title went to Thomas, his eldest son, now the only 
surviving brother of the subject of this sketch." 

During all this period the house of Sir John 
in Liverpool was a sort of rendezvous for the 
leaders of his party, and the home-life of the fam- 
ily was deeply tinctured with political thought 
and feeling. Sir John early discovered the keen 
intellectual powers of his son, and it is said that 
before the boy had reached his teens father and 
son were in the habit of conversing together on 
the various tojiics of public interest. The boy- 
hood of William Ewart, like that of William 
Pitt, was thus .passed in the midst of associa- 
tions which were best calculated to foster and en* 



BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND EDUCATION. 15 

courage the natural development of his special 
genius. 

About the first steps in the future statesman's 
education very little is known. He probably re- 
ceived his earliest instruction at home and from 
his parents, and Archdeacon Jones was his first 
school-master. The most interesting reminis- 
cence of his school-days is preserved in an anec- 
dote told recently by Dean Stanley: ^' There is 
a small scliool near Liverpool," said the Dean, 
"at which Mr. Gladstone was brought up before 
he went to Eton. A few years afterward another 
little boy, who went to this school, and whose 
name I will not mention, called upon the old 
clergyman who was the head master. The boy 
was now a young man, and he said to the old 
clergyman, ^ There is one thing in which I have 
never in the least degree improved since I was at 
school — the casting up of figures.' *Well,' re- 
plied the master, * it is very extraordinary that it 
should be so, because certainly no one could be 
a more incapable arithmetician at school than 
you were ; but I will tell you a curious thing. 
When Mr. Gladstone was at the school, he was 
just as incapable at addition and subtraction as 
you were : now you see what he has become. He 
is one of the greatest of our financiers.'" 

In September, 1821, Mr. Gladstone, then in 
his twelfth year, was entered at Eton, where he 
remained for the ensuing six years. It is not re- 



16 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

corded that he especially distinguished himself in 
the ordinary work of the school, except that on 
several occasions he was "sent up for good" on 
account of verses ; but he was one of the found- 
ers of, and by far the most copious contributor to, 
the "Eton Miscellany." Among other contribu- 
tors to the "Miscellany" were G. A. (afterward 
Bishop) Selwyn, Arthur Henry Hallam, and F. H. 
(now Sir Francis Hastings) Doyle ; but young 
Gladstone took the lion's share of the work upon 
himself, writing with equal facility in prose and 
verse, translating from the Greek and Latin, in- 
dulging in humorous extravagances, and inditing, 
among other things, a tremendous " heroic " poem 
of two hundred and fifty lines on Kichard Coeur de 
Lion. 

Leaving Eton in 1827, he became the private 
pupil of Dr. Turner, afterward Bishop of Cal- 
cutta, with whom he continued for two years ; 
and in 1829, being then in his twenty-first year, 
he was sent to Christ Church College, Oxford, 
where, in 1831, he graduated with the rare 
honors of a " double first-class " — first-class both 
in classics and in mathematics. Perhaps the thing 
by which he profited most during his stay at Ox- 
ford was the Debating Society, or Oxford Union, 
in connection with which we get the most in- 
teresting and characteristic glimpses of him at 
this period. Says Mr. Smith, his most painstak- 
ing biographer : " Mr. Gladstone made his first 



BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND EDUCATIOX. 17 

speech on the 11th of February, 1830, and was 
the same night elected a member of the com- 
mittee. The following year he succeeded Mr. 
Milnes Gaskell in the office of secretary. 'His 
minutes are neat ; proper names are underlined 
and half printed. As secretary, he opposed a 
motion for the removal of Jewish disabilities. 
He also moved that the Wellington administra- 
tion was undeserving of the country's confidence : 
Gaskell, Lyall, and Lord Lincoln supported, 
Sidney Herbert and the Marquis (now Duke) of 
Abercorn opposed him. The motion was carried 
by 57 to 56, and the natural exultation of the 
mover betrayed itself in such irregular entries as 
* ' tremendous cheers, " * ' repeated cheering. " The 
following week he was elected president.' Mr. 
Gladstone spoke in three other debates upon im- 
portant public questions. In common with the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, he defended the re- 
sults of Catholic relief, and, on the occasion of a 
vote of want of confidence in Earl Grey's govern- 
ment being proposed [on account of the first move- 
ment toward Parliamentary Eeform], he moved the 
following rider : ' That the ministry has unwisely 
introduced, and most unscrupulously forwarded, 
a measure which threatens not only to change our 
form of government, but ultimately to break up 
the very foundation of social order, as well as ma- 
terially to foward the views of those who are pur- 
suing this project throughout the civilized world. ' 
2 



18 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

These terrible prognostications have been de- 
feated, but the terror engendered in the Univer- 
sity by national progress led 94 out of 130 under- 
graduates to endorse the prophecies of the new 
Cassandra. Mr. Gladstone closed his career at 
the Oxford Union by proposing an amendment 
to a motion for the immediate emancipation of 
our slaves in the West Indies. This was on June 
2, 1831, and the young orator's amendment ran 
as follows : ' That legislative enactments ought 
to be made, and, if necessary, to be enforced — 1st, 
for better guarding the personal and civil rights 
of the negroes in our West Indian colonies ; 2d, 
for establishing compulsory manumission ; 3d, 
for securing universally the receiving of a Chris- 
tian education, under the clergy and teachers, in- 
dependent of the planters ; a measure of which 
total but gradual emancipation will be the natural 
consequence, as it was of a similar procedure in 
the first ages of Christianity. ' " 

Read in the light of his later opinions, and of 
the acts which have secured his fame as a states- 
man, these records are very curious. Home in- 
fluences, together with that peculiar fascination 
which the name and personality of Canning seem 
always to have possessed for him, had early im- 
bued the youthful Gladstone with Tory senti- 
ments of the most rigid and bigoted type ; and 
these sentiments were confirmed and strength- 
ened by his University career, the traditions of 



BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND EDUCATION. 19 

Oxford being all in that direction, while the col- 
legians with whom he was more intimately asso- 
ciated were for the most part both Tories and 
High Churchmen. Summing up at a much later 
period (in a speech delivered at the opening of the 
Palmerston Club, Oxford, in December, 1878) the 
general effect of his University training, Mr. 
Gladstone said : 

" I trace in the education of Oxford of my own time 
one great defect. Perhaps it was my own fault ; but I 
must admit that I did not learn, when at Oxford, that 
which I have learned since, viz., to set a due value on 
the imperishable and the inestimable principles of human 
liberty. The temper which, I think, too much prevailed 
in academic circles was, that liberty was regarded with 
jealousy, and fear could not be wholly dispensed with. 
.... I think that the principle of the Conservative party is 
jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by 
fear ; but I think the policy of the Liberal party is trust 
in the people, only qualified by prudence. I can only 
assure you, gentlemen, that, now I am in front of ex- 
tended popular privileges, I have no fear of those en- 
largements of the constitution that seem to be ap- 
proaching. On the contrary, I hail them with desire. 
I am not in the least degree conscious that I have less 
reverence for antiquity, for the beautiful, and good, and 
glorious charges that our ancestors have handed down to 
us as a patrimony to our race, than I had in other days 
when I held other political opinions. I have learned to 
set the true value upon human liberty, and in whatever 
I have changed, there, and there only, has been the ex- 
planation of the change." 



20 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

On the completion of his University course Mr. 
Gladstone spent a short time at home, and then 
proceeded to the Continent for travel and recrea- 
tion, spending several months in Italy, whence 
he was hastily recalled by an ofier of a seat in the 
House of Commons. 



III. 

IN PARLIAMENT. 

"Mr. Gladstone," says Mr. Lucy, "was in 
Italy when the summons came in obedience to 
which he placed his foot on the first rung in the 
ladder of fame. It was in the year 1832. The 
Reform Bill had just been passed, and the United 
Kingdom was in the throes of expectation as to 
what might follow on the summoning of the first 
Reform Parliament. It was the Duke of New- 
castle, registered owner of the borough of Newark, 
who was immediately instrumental in bringing 
Mr. Gladstone into the House of Commons. In 
a conversation which took place upon the hust- 
ings on the day of nomination, there is something 
eminently characteristic of Mr. Gladstone as we 
know him in these days. A matter-of-fact elec- 
tor, who probably did not rent his house or shop 
from the Duke, asked the young candidate, 



IN PARLIAMENT. 21 

'Whether he was not the Duke of Newcastle's 
nominee ? ' This was an exceedingly embarrass- 
ing question. If the candidate said 'No,' he 
would be convicted, within every man's knowl- 
edge, of a falsehood. If he said ' Yes,' what a 
farce was this nomination and bustle at the poll ! 
But Mr. Gladstone, though an exceedingly young 
bird at this date, was not to be caught by chaff. 
He asked the honorable elector to do him the fa- 
vor of defining the term nominee. The unwary 
elector fell into the trap, and Mr. Gladstone was, 
of course, able to declare that in such a sense he 
was not the Duke's nominee.* As a matter of 
fact he certainly was, and the preponderance of 
the Duke's influence was indicated by his being 
returned at the head of the poll." 

* The question and answer were as follows, as reported in 
one of the local journals : 

"Mr. Gillson inquired of Mr. Gladstone how he came to 
Newark, after he had neglected to attend a meeting of the 
electors to which he was invited, and whether he was not the 
Duke of Newcastle's nominee. 

" Mr. Gladstone wished to have Mr. Gillson's definition of the 
term ' nominee,' and then he would answer. 

" Mr. Gillson said he meant a person sent by the Duke of 
Newcastle to be pushed down the electors' throats, whether 
they would or not. 

" Mr. Gladstone replied, then, according to that definition, he 
was not a nominee. He came to Newark by the invitation of 
the Red Club, than whom none were more respectable and in- 
telligent. The Club sent to the Duke of Newcastle to know 
if he could recommend a candidate to them, and in consequence 



22 ^^ILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

A further proof that he was the Duke's nom- 
inee is to be found in the fact that when, several 
years later, Mr. Gladstone had resolved to sup- 
port Sir Eobert Peel's free-trade policy, he felt 
obliged to resign his seat for Newark solely be- 
cause the Duke of Newcastle was opposed to that 
policy ; but this only fortifies the one strong ar- 
gument in favor of pocket or nomination boroughs, 
namely, that they gave the opportunity for in- 
troducing into the House of Commons young 
men of promise, who would never have secured 
such an advantage on their own merits alone. 
It will be remembered that Macaulay was intro- 
duced in the same way by Lord Lansdowne ; and 
certainly, if no worse abuses were connected with 
pocket boroughs than furnishing opportunities 
to such young men as Macaulay and Gladstone, 
there would have been very little to say against 
them. 

In spite of the support of the Duke, however, 
the youthful candidate encountered vigorous op- 
position, and was subjected by one of the local 
journals to the following sharp criticism, which 
is particularly interesting, in view of the fact that 
the object of it was destined to equip the voters 
with that very ballot which is here appealed to 
against him : *' Mr. Gladstone is the son of 
Gladstone, of Liverpool, a person who (we are 

he was appealed to, and accepted the invitation of the Red 
Club." 



IN PARLIAMENT. 23 

speaking of the father) had amassed a large for- 
tune by West India dealings. In other words, 
a great part of his gold has sprung from the 
blood of black slaves. Respecting the youth 
himself — a person fresh from college, and whose 
mind is as much like a sheet of white foolscap as 
possible — he was utterly unknown. He came rec- 
ommended by no claim in the world except the 
will of the Duke. The Duke nodded unto New- 
ark, and Newark sent back the man, or rather 
the boy, of his choice. What ! Is this to be, now 
that the Reform Bill has done its work ? Are 
sixteen hundred men still to bow down to a 
wooden-headed lord, as the people of Egypt used 
to do to their beasts, to their reptiles, and their 
ropes of onions ? There must be something 
wrong — something imperfect. What is it ? What 
is wanting ? Why, the ballot ! If there be a 
doubt of this (and we believe there is a doubt 
even among intelligent men), the tale of Newark 
must set the question at rest. Serjeant Wilde 
was met on his entry into the town by almost the 
whole population. He was greeted everywhere, 
cheered everywhere. He was received with de- 
light by his friends, and with good and earnest 
wishes for his success by his nominal foes. The 
voters for Gladstone went up to that candidate's 
booth (the slave-driver, as they called him) with 
Wilde's colors. People who had before voted for 
Wilde, on being asked to give up their suffrage, 



24 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

said : ' "We can not, we dare not. We have lost 
half our business, and shall lose the rest if we go 
against the Duke. We would do anything in our 
power for Serjeant Wilde, and for the cause, but 
we can not starve ! ' Now, what say ye, our merry 
men, touching the ballot ? " 

On the other hand, his personal appearance 
was very much in his favor, and the speeches he 
delivered made such an impression that another 
journalist *^ ventures to predict, without the slight- 
est exaggeration, that he will one day be classed 
amongst the most able statesmen in the British 
senate. " But the most interesting feature of the 
contest was the ** Election Address," which is 
Mr. Gladstone's first authentic public utterance, 
and which is worth preserving as the starting- 
point of that great career which has since swept 
so widely away from the principles and senti- 
ments therein laid down. The document is dated 
*' Clinton Arms, Newark, October 9, 1832," is 
inscribed '*To the worthy and independent 
electors of the Borough of Newark," and is as 
follows : 

" Having now completed my canvass, I think it my 
duty as well to remind you of the principles on which I 
have solicited your votes, as freely to assure my friends 
that its result has placed my success beyond a doubt. 

" I have not requested your favor on the ground of 
adherence to the opinions of any man or party, further 
than such adherence can be fairly understood from the 



IN PARLIAMENT. 25 

conviction I have not hesitated to avow, that we must 
watch and resist that uninquiring and indiscriminating 
desire for change among us, which threatens to produce, 
along with partial good, a melancholy preponderance of 
mischief; which, I am persuaded, would aggravate be- 
yond computation the deep-seated evils of our social state, 
and the heavy burdens of our industrial classes ; which, 
by disturbing our peace, destroys confidence, and strikes 
at the root of prosperity. Thus it has done already ; 
and thus, we must therefore believe, it will do. 

" For the mitigation of those evils, we must, I think, 
look not only to particular measures, but to the resto- 
ration of sounder general principles. I mean especially 
that principle on which alone the incorporation of 
religion with the State in our constitution can be de- 
fended ; that the duties of governors are strictly and pe- 
culiarly religious ; and that legislatures, like individuals, 
are bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the 
high truths they have acknowledged. Principles are 
now arrayed against our institutions ; and not by truck- 
ling nor by temporizing — not by oppression nor corrup- 
tion — but by principles, they must be met. 

" Among their first results should be a sedulous and 
special attention to the interest of the poor, founded 
upon the rule that those who are the least able to take 
care of themselves should be most regarded by others. 
Particularly it is a duty to endeavor, by every means, 
that lahor may receive adequate remuneration; which, 
unhappily, among several classes of our fellow country- 
men is not now the case. Whatever measures there- 
fore — whether by correction of the poor laws, allotment 
of cottage grounds, or otherwise — tend to promote this 
object, I deem entitled to the warmest support, with all 



26 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

such as are calculated to secure sound moral conduct 
in any class of society. 

"I proceed to the momentous question of slavery, 
which I have found entertained among you in that can- 
did and temperate spirit which alone befits its nature, 
or promises to remove its difficulties. If I have not rec- 
ognized the right of an irresponsible society to inter- 
pose between me and the electors, it has not been from 
any disrespect to its members, nor from unwillingness to 
answer theirs or any other questions on which the elec- 
tors may desire to know my views. To the esteemed 
secretary of the society I submitted my reasons for si- 
lence; and I made a point of stating these views to him, 
in his character of a voter. 

" As regards the abstract lawfulness of slavery, I 
acknowledge it simply as importing the right of one 
man to the labor of another ; and I rest it upon the fact 
that Scripture, the paramount authority upon such a 
point, gives directions to persons standing in the rela- 
tion of master to slave, for their conduct in that direc- 
tion; whereas, were the matter absolutely and necessa- 
rily sinful^ it would not regulate the manner. Assuming 
sin as the cause of degradation, it strives, and strives 
most effectually, to cure the latter by extirpating the 
former. We are agreed that both the physical and 
the moral bondage of the slave are to be abolished. 
The question is as to the order^ and the order only ; 
now Scripture attacks the moral evil 'before the tem- 
poral one, and the temporal through the moral one, 
and I am content with the order which Scripture has 
established. 

" To this end, I desire to see immediately set on 
foot, by impartial and sovereign authority, a universal 



IN PARLIAMENT. 27 

and efficient system of Christian instruction, not in- 
tended to resist designs of individual piety and wis- 
dom for the religious improvement of the negroes, 
but to do thoroughly what they can only do par- 
tially. 

*' As regards immediate emancipation, whether with 
or without compensation, there are several minor reasons 
against it; but that which weighs with me is that it 
would, I much fear, exchange the evils now affecting the 
negro for others which are weightier — for a relapse into 
deeper debasement, if not for bloodshed and internal 
war. Let Jitness be made a condition for emancipation ; 
and let us strive to bring him to that fitness by the short- 
est possible course. Let him enjoy the means of earn- 
ing his freedom through honest and industrious habits ; 
thus the same instruments which attain his liberty shall 
likewise render him competent to use it ; and thus, I 
earnestly trust, without risk of blood, without violation 
of property, with unimpaired benefit to the negro, and 
with the utmost speed which prudence will admit, we shall 
arrive at that exceedingly desirable consummation, the 
utter extinction of slavery. 

" And now, gentlemen, as regards the enthusiasm 
with which you have rallied round your ancient flag, 
and welcomed the humble representative of those prin- 
ciples whose emblem it is, I trust that neither the lapse 
of time nor the seductions of prosperity can ever efface 
it from my memory. To my opponents, my acknowl- 
edgments are due for the good-humor and kindness with 
which they have received me; and, while I would thank 
my friends for their zealous and unwearied exertions in 
my favor, I briefly but emphatically assure them that, if 
promises be an adequate foundation of confidence, ot 



28 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

experience a reasonable ground of calculation, our Tictory 
K< sure. 

*• I have the honor to be. gentlemen, 

"Your obliged and obedient servant, 

" W. E. Gladstone." 

As has already been said, the result of the con- 
test was that Mr. Gladstone came out at the head 
of the poll : and thus, at the age of twenty-three, 
he found himself in that position to which he had 
begun to aspire when, as a youth of seventeen, he 
was writing for the "Eton Miscellany." and avow- 
ing Canning to be his ideal of a statesman. 

The first Reform Pivrliament met in January, 
1833, and the young member from Xewiirk quietly 
entered upon the scene where for nearly fifty years 
he has played so conspicuous a piut. In his 
maiden speech, as in every other particular of his 
career, he differed as widely as possible from the 
great riral whose persistent efforts to obtain en- 
trance to the House of Commons had hitherto 
failed, and whose mekxiramatic and pretentious 
" first speech " at a later period invited the mor- 
tifying failure which it achieved. Mr. Gladstone's 
nuiiden s]^>eech was not delivered in the course of 
a great debate, but ujx>n a sort of side issue, and, 
in fact, in defense of his father, to whom personal 
reference had been made in the course of a dis- 
cussion on the abolition of slavery in the We^t 
Indies. It was modest ivnd ivrgumentative. ad- 
hering closely to facts, and making small attempt 



IN PARLIAMENT. 29 

at oratorical display ; and it produced so favorable 
an impression upon the House that he was listened 
to respectfully whenever he rose thereafter. Mr. 
Justin McCarthy says that *'he was from the very 
first recognized as a brilliant debater, and as one 
who promised to be an orator " ; but this hardly 
applies to his very earliest efforts, when he w^as 
testing, as it were, the quality of his instruments, 
and catching the tone of the House. 

Once again during this first session Mr. Glad- 
stone spoke on the question of the abolition of 
slavery. His father owned many slaves in Dem- 
erara, and to denounce the institution of slavery 
was, in a sense, to impugn his father's humanity ; 
and Mr. Gladstone seems to have been somewhat 
hampered by this complication of affairs. Still, 
his attitude was not one of unqualified hostility 
to emancipation. He thought that emancipation 
should be gradual, and should be carefully pre- 
pared for ; and he demanded, above all, that the 
interests of the planters should be duly regarded. 
The House agreed with him in part, for the abo- 
lition of colonial slavery was decreed, and the sum 
of £20,000,000 was voted to the slave-owners as 
compensation for their losses. 

Nothing could well be more dreary than a mi- 
nute record of debates and divisions — of those 
factitious struggles where, as Mr. Carlyle says, 
** Hungry Greek meets hungry Greek on the floor 
of St. Stephen's, and wrestles with him and throt- 



30 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ties liim until he has to cry, ^ Hold ! the office is 
thine ' " ; and it is not our intention to do more 
than mention the salient questions in which Mr. 
Gladstone has taken part, and which form land- 
marks in his political career. It is always diffi- 
cult to detach the personal biography of a states- 
man from the history of his times, and perhaps 
more difficult still to combine them into a satisfac- 
tory whole. This is the reason, possibly, why lives 
of public men are nearly always either dull and 
prosy or sketchy and inadequate ; but, as our space 
is strictly limited, we shall endeavor to escape 
dullness by avoiding details, and must content 
ourselves with stating results. 

In his first session, besides resisting the aboli- 
tion of slavery, Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech 
in defense of ^^that estimable body of politicians, 
the Freemen of Liverpool, who were threatened 
with extinction consequent upon a too open exer- 
cise of their alleged right to do what they liked 
with their own — that is to say, to get as much as 
possible for their votes." The House did not ac- 
cept his defense as adequate, and he was also 
unsuccessful in resisting an attempt to deal with 
the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, and in 
opposing Mr. Hume in his effort to open the uni- 
versities to Nonconformists. 

Though, generally speaking, on the losing side 
and voting in the minority, before the close of the 
session Mr. Gladstone had convinced the House, 



IN PARLIAMENT. 31 

and especially the Tory portion of it, that he was 
emphatically one of its coming men, and had 
manifested that remarkable skill in dealing with 
facts and figures that has ever since been one of 
his most striking characteristics. Recognition of 
this came sooner than could reasonably have been 
expected. *^ Sir Robert Peel had quietly noted 
the young member for Newark, and when, in 
the last days of 1834, the Right Hon. Baronet 
undertook to form a ministry in succession to that 
of Lord Melbourne, he offered Mr. Gladstone the 
post of Junior Lord of the Treasury. This was 
a tolerable success for a young man in the twen- 
ty-fifth year of his age, and at the close of his 
second parliamentary session. But it was the 
prelude to even more rapid advancement. Parlia- 
ment had scarcely met for the session of 1835 
when he was installed in the office of Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies, and lost no time in 
bringing in his first bill — a measure designed to 
improve the condition of passengers in merchant 
vessels. The ministry was, however, too short- 
lived for this humble effort to be added to the 
accomplishments of the statute-book. Mr. Glad- 
stone's young hopes received a temporary blow 
from contact with the question of the Irish 
Church, which has exercised so important an in- 
fluence on later stages of his career. It was on 
a resolution containing the nucleus of the Irish 
Church bill of 1869 that the first ministry ol 



32 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

which he formed a member was defeated, and 
forced to resign." 

In his speech on this resolution Mr. Gladstone 
declared that the system involved in the Church 
of Ireland involved the existence of all Church 
establishments, and added : "If in the adminis- 
tration of this great country the elements of re- 
ligion should not enter — if those who were called 
upon to guide it in its career should be forced to 
listen to the caprices and to the whims of every 
body of visionaries, they would lose that station 
all great men were hitherto proud of. He hoped 
that he should never live to see the day when any 
principle leading to such a result would be adopted 
in this country." 

During the next five or six years Mr. Gladstone 
was in Opposition ; but, whether in office or out, 
his reputation steadily increased, and he gradually 
became recognized as the ablest lieutenant of Sir 
Robert Peel, the great Conservative chief. He 
spoke frequently in debates, and the growth of 
his position in the country as well as in Parlia- 
ment is testified to by the fact that in 1837, 
when only in his twenty-eighth year, he was in- 
vited to stand as the Tory candidate for the 
great city of Manchester. He declined, having 
already pledged himself to Newark, and not 
being disposed to give up a safe seat for a high- 
ly uncertain one ; but he was run, neverthe- 
less, and polled such an unexpectedly large num- 



IN PARLIAMENT. 33 

ber of votes as to show unmistakably his great 
popularity. 

In the following Parliament, which was the 
first of Queen Victoria (1838), there being another 
stormy revival of the anti-slavery agitation, Mr. 
Gladstone delivered a long and powerful speech 
on negro apprenticeship in the West Indies, 
which, though on the unpopular side of the ques- 
tion, confessedly lifted him to the front rank of 
Parliamentary orators. In this year, also, Mr. 
Gladstone issued his first published work, " The 
State in its Relations with the Church," in a re- 
view of which in the ^'Edinburgh Review" 
Macaulay described its author in a famous sen- 
tence as ^* a young man of unblemished character, 
and of distinguished Parliamentary talents, the 
rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories 
who follow reluctantly and mutinously a leader 
whose experience and eloquence are indispensable 
to them, but whose cautious temper and moder- 
ate opinions they abhor." According to Ma- 
caulay, the theory of the book is based upon the 
proposition that the propagation of religious 
truth is one of the chief ends of government ; 
and one of its doctrines which he confutes 
with especial warmth is the principle which, 
as he states it, " would give the Irish a Prot- 
estant Church, whether they like it or not." It 
is a curious fact that the author of the book 
which contained this doctrine was the author of 
3 



84 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the disestablishment of the State Church in Ire- 
land. 

Mr. Gladstone's essay passed rapidly through 
several editions, and in 1840 he followed it up 
with another work on a subject nearly related 
thereto, entitled *^ Church Principles Considered 
in their Results," the object of which " was to pre- 
sent a familiar or partial representation of the 
moral characteristics and effects of those doctrines 
which are now, more than ever, felt in the English 
Church to be full of intrinsic value, and which 
likewise appear to have much special adaptation to 
the circumstances of the time. " Still another work, 
written at a much later period, but requiring to 
be considered along with these early ecclesiastical 
writings, is ^^ A Chapter of Autobiography." This 
latter was published in 1868, and attempts to ex- 
plain the reasons for that great change of opinion 
which led the author of '* The State in its Rela- 
tions with the Church " to take the leading part 
in destroying the fabric of the Irish Church. It 
is what it professes to be, a genuine chapter of au- 
tobiography ; and it should be read by all who 
would understand Mr. Gladstone's character and 
the inmost workings of his mind. 

The first treatise was ^^ inscribed to the Uni- 
versity of Oxford ; tried and not found wanting 
through the vicissitudes of a thousand years ; in 
the belief that she is providentially designed to 
be a fountain of blessings, spiritual, social, and 



IN PARLIAMENT. 35 

intellectual, to this and to otlier countries, to the 
present and future times ; and in the hope that 
the temper of these pages may be found not alien 
from her own." Both the compliment and the 
tract were highly acceptable to Oxford, and she 
did not forget either when, eight years later, a 
change in the political relations of the member for 
Newark necessitated his looking for another seat. 
"In other directions than that of literature 
and the Church," says Mr. Lucy, "the rising 
hope of the stern unbending Tories justified the 
description of the Edinburgh reviewer. We find 
him at this period lending the weight of his elo- 
quence and the force of his genius to stopping 
the progress of Eeform in whatever direction it 
was urged. He opposed a ministerial scheme for 
dealing with the Church rates in deference to the 
views of Dissenters. He passionately defended 
negro apprenticeship, the last vestige of slavery 
permitted in the West Indies. He opposed a 
scheme of national education in which, as Lord 
Morpeth put it, * it was declared to be the duty 
of the State to provide education for Dissenters 
so long as it fingered their gold,' and he fought 
hard in the long battle against the bill designed 
to remove the civil disabilities of Jews. He was 
always thorough, and, being in these days of par- 
tially developed intelligence a Tory, he was, to 
borrow a phrase of Dick Swiveller's friend the 
Marchioness, * a nout-an'-nouter.'" 



36 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Mr. Gladstone being now launched on the full 
tide of Parliamentary success, the reader will 
probably be glad to obtain a closer and more per- 
sonal view of him at this period ; and fortunately 
the material is at hand. In a little book entitled 
*' The British Senate in 1838/' the author, among 
many other piquant personal descriptions of emi- 
nent men, sketches the following portrait of ^'the 
niuat rising young man on the Tory side of the 
House": 

' ' Mr. Gladstone's appearance and manners are 
much in his favor. He is a fine-looking man. 
He is about the usual height, and of good figure. 
His countenance is mild and pleasant, and has a 
highly intellectual expression. His eyes are clear 
and quick. His eyebrows are dark and rather 
prominent. There is not a dandy in the House 
but envies what Truefit would call his ' fine head 
of jet-black hair.' It is always carefully parted 
from the crown downward to his brow, where it 
is tastefully shaded. His features are small and 
regular, and his complexion must be a very un- 
worthy witness if he does not possess an abundant 
stock of health. 

"Mr. Gladstone's gesture is varied, but not 
violent. When he rises he generally puts both 
his hands behind his back ; and having there suf- 
fered them to embrace each other for a short 
time, he unclasps them, and allows them to drop 
on either side. They are not permitted to remain 



IN PARLIAMENT. 37 

long in that locality before you see them again 
closed together and hanging down before him. 
Their reunion is not suffered to last for any length 
of time. Again a separation takes place, and now 
the right hand is seen moving up and down be- 
fore him. Having thus exercised it a little, he 
thrusts it into the pocket of his coat, and then 
orders the left hand to follow its example. Hav- 
ing granted them a momentary repose there, they 
are again put into gentle motion ; and in a few 
seconds they are seen reposing vis-a-vis on his 
breast. He moves his face and body from one 
direction to another, not forgetting to bestow a 
liberal share of his attention on his own party. 
He is always listened to with much attention by 
the House, and appears to be highly respected by 
men of all parties. He is a man of good business 
habits ; of this he furnished abundant proof when 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, during the 
short-lived administration of Sir Kobert Peel. . . . 
*^ He is well informed on most of the subjects 
which usually occupy the attention of the Legis- 
lature ; and he is happy in turning his informa- 
tion to good account. He is ready on all occa- 
sions which he deems fitting ones with a speech 
in favor of the policy advocated by the party with 
whom he acts. His extempore resources are am- 
ple. Few men in the House can improvise better. 
It does not appear to cost him an effort to speak. 
, , . His style is polished, but has no appearance 



38 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

of the effect of previous preparation. He dis- 
plays considerable acuteness in replying to an op- 
ponent ; he is quick in his perception of anything 
vulnerable in the speech to which he replies, and 
happy in laying the weak point bare to the gaze 
of the House. He now and then indulges in 
sarcasm, which is, in most cases, very felici- 
tous. He is plausible even when most in error. 
When it suits himself or his party, he can apply 
himself with the strictest closeness to the real 
point at issue ; when to evade the point is deemed 
most politic, no man can wander from it more 
widely." 

Another writer tells us that during his first 
years in Parliament he was known as " handsome 
Gladstone," and was often pointed out as the best- 
looking young man in the House. At the time 
of his second election for Newark, one of the 
local journals declared him to be ^* not more re- 
markable for his extraordinary talents than for 
his amiable manners." And Mr. Smith says : 
" The field of politics was at this time conspicu- 
ous for the bitterness of its encounters, but Mr. 
Gladstone held himself aloof from mere gladiato- 
rial exhibitions, and earned the respect of the 
whole House by his courteous bearing and the 
general urbanity of his manners. " Yet he was a 
very fervid speaker. Even in his early days at 
the Oxford Union, we are assured that the ear- 
nestness and intensity of his language and bear- 



IN PARLIAMENT. 39 

ing were sometimes painful; *' conviction was 
stamped on every word he uttered." 

To this period also belongs a domestic occur- 
rence which, together with other personal mat- 
ters, may conveniently be mentioned here. Says 
Mr. Smith : '' In the month of July, 1839, Mr. 
Gladstone was married to a lady who is almost as 
distinguished for her many benevolent and social 
qualities as Mr. Gladstone is in political and public 
life. The name of Mrs. Gladstone is widely known 
as that of a practical philanthropist, while to Mr. 
Gladstone himself — we may, perhaps, be pardoned 
for saying — she has ever been that interested 
sharer in his triumphs and consoler in his defeats 
which the late Viscountess Beaconsfield was to 
his Parliamentary rival. Mrs. Gladstone was Miss 
Catherine Glynne, daughter of Sir Stephen Rich- 
ard Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire. 
Their union has been blessed by eight children, 
all of whom, save one, still survive. Of the four 
sons, the eldest, William Henry, is a member of 
the Legislature, and the second, the Rev. Stephen 
Edward Gladstone, is rector of Hawarden. The 
third and fourth sons are named Henry Neville 
and Herbert John Gladstone respectively. The 
former pursues a commercial career. Mr. Glad- 
stone's eldest daughter, Anne, is married to the 
Rev. E. C. Wickham, M. A., head-master of Wel- 
lington College ; the second daughter, Miss Cath- 
erine Jessy Gladstone, died in 1850. Two other 



40 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

daughters still survive, in addition to Mrs. Wick- 
ham, viz., the Misses Mary and Helen Gladstone. 
As Sir John Gladstone had the pleasure of seeing 
his son William Ewart a member of the same 
Senate with himself, so Mr. Gladstone has wit- 
nessed his eldest son in turn take his seat in the 
House of Commons as member for Whitby. Mrs. 
Gladstone's sister, Miss Mary Glynne, became the 
wife of Lord Lyttelton, with whom Mr. Glad- 
stone was on terms of the most intimate friend- 
ship until his lordship's untoward and lamented 
death." 



IV. 

IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 

For several years previous to 1841 the Whig 
ministry had been growing unpopular, and in 
June of that year was defeated by a small majori- 
ty on a motion of want of confidence. Instead of 
resigning, Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, 
dissolved Parliament and appealed to the constit- 
uencies ; but the result of a general election was 
the return of a heavy Tory majority, and the con- 
sequent accession to power of Sir Robert Peel. 
Mr. Gladstone was again returned for Newark 
at the head of the poll, and in the new ministry 
received the dual appointments of Vice-President 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 41 

of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. 
It was said at the time that he was given two 
laborious offices in order, if possible, to keep him 
quiet, and, by giving him too much to do, to pre- 
vent him from troubling himself about the Church. 
If that was the object, it was certainly effective, 
for a time at least, for Mr. Gladstone was soon 
absorbed in his official and Parliamentary work, 
and for many years his theological disquisitions 
were suspended. 

It was during the session of 1842 that Sir 
Robert Peel brought forward his new sliding scale 
of Corn Duties. He proposed that a duty of 
twenty shillings should be levied when wheat was 
at fifty-one shillings per quarter, to descend to 
one shilling when the price was seventy-three, 
with rests at intermediate prices, intended to 
diminish the possibility of tampering with the 
averages. The measure was vigorously assailed 
by Lord John Russell and as vigorously defended 
by Mr. Gladstone, who said in the course of his 
speech that, *' between the opposite extremes of 
those who thought with the Anti-Corn- Law Con- 
vention, and those who thought with the Agri- 
cultural Association of Boston, he believed that 
the measure of the Government was a fair me- 
dium ; and that it would give relief to consumers, 
steadiness to prices, and increase to foreign trade, 
and a general improvement to the condition of 
the country." It is noteworthy that at this 



43 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

period a motion brought forward by Mr. Vil- 
liers for the immediate repeal of the Corn Laws 
was defeated by the enormous majority of 393 
to 90. 

" The second branch of the financial plan of 
the Government," says Mr. Smith, **the revised 
Tariff or Customs Duties scheme, was a formi- 
dable undertaking. Though brought into the 
House by the Prime Minister, it was understood 
to be almost wholly the work of his able lieuten- 
ant, Mr. Gladstone. Out of some twelve hundred 
duty-paying articles, a total abolition, or a con- 
siderable reduction, took place in no fewer than 
seven hundred and fifty of such articles. Sir 
Robert Peel's boast, that he had endeavored to 
relieve manufacturing industry, was more than 
justified by this great and comprehensive measure. 
He had acknowledged, amid loud cheers from the 
opposition, that all were agreed in the general 
rule that we should purchase in the cheapest 
market and sell in the dearest ; but he added, ' If 
I proposed a greater change in the Corn Laws 
than that which I submit to the consideration of 
the House, I should only aggravate the distress of 
the country, and only increase the alarm which 
prevails among important interests.' Mr. Hume, 
however, hailed with joy the appearance of the 
Premier and his colleagues as converts to the 
principles of Free Trade. Mr. Gladstone replied 
that,' though it was not worth while now to discuss 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 43 

who were the authors of the principles on which 
the Government measure was founded, he must 
enter his protest against the statement that the 
ministry came forward as converts to principles 
which they had formerly opposed. The late Gov- 
ernment had certainly done very little for the 
principles of commercial relaxation. 

** Again and again, during the progress of the 
Tariffs Bill, was Mr. Gladstone called upon to 
defend the details of the Government scheme. 
Something was said upon almost every article of 
consumption included in or excluded from the 
plan ; but it was admitted on all hands that great 
fiscal reforms had been conceived and executed. 
No measure with which Mr. Gladstone's name 
has since been connected more fully attested his 
mastery over detail, his power of comprehending 
the commercial interests of the country, or his 
capacity as a practical statesman in suggesting the 
best means for relieving the manufacturing indus- 
tries of their burdens, than the revised Tariff 
scheme of 1842. Some idea of the strain involved 
upon him during this session may be gathered 
from the fact that Hansard records he rose to his 
feet no fewer than one hundred and twenty-nine 
times, in connection with measures before the 
House, but chiefly touching the provisions of the 
Tariff bill." 

Harriet Martineau, a writer by no means par- 
tial to the Tories, says of the session of 1842 (in 



44 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

her "History of England during the Thirty 
Years' Peace ") i " The nation saw and felt that 
its business was understood and accomplished, 
and the House of Commons was no longer like a 
sleeper under a nightmare. The long session was 
a busy one. The Queen wore a cheerful air when 
she thanked her Parliament for their effectual 
labors. The opposition was such as could no 
longer impede the operations of the next session. 
The condition of the country was fearful enough ; 
but something was done for its future improve- 
ment, and the way was now shown to be open for 
further beneficent legislation. " 

The condition of the country did not improve 
during the recess, and the growing distress nerved 
the Corn-Law reformers to renewed efforts. At 
the very beginning of the session of 1843 Lord 
Howick called for a committee of the whole House 
to consider the reference in the Queen's Speech to 
the long-continued depression of manufacturing 
industry. This was regarded as an indirect blow 
at the Corn Laws, and was energetically and suc- 
cessfully opposed both by Mr. Gladstone and by 
Sir Eobert Peel. Twice again during the session 
the same question was raised, and as often defeated 
by large majorities, though signs were not want- 
ing that both of the great political parties were 
tending toward a relaxation of their more rigid 
Protectionist doctrines. 

In this year (1843) Mr. Gladstone succeeded 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 45 

the Earl of Ripon as President of the Board of 
Trade, and, in this capacity, carried, among other 
measures, an important bill controlling the then 
young domestic institution of railways. " Since 
the year 1843," says Mr. Lucy, "Mr. Gladstone 
has done so much for the people that his compara- 
tively minor achievements are lost sight of. It is, 
nevertheless, interesting to recall the fact that he 
was the author of the Parliamentary train which 
travels the full length of all lines twice a day at 
a fare of one penny a mile — perhaps a more use- 
ful work than his essay on *The State in its 
Relations with the Church,' or even his pamphlet 
on ' Vaticanism.' " 

During the session of 1844 Mr. Gladstone was 
very busy with the duties of his department, and 
took a leading part in all the important debates ; 
but scarcely had Parliament met in 1845 when it 
became known that he had resigned his post in 
the ministry. This step was due to scruples of 
conscience about Sir Robert Peel's measure for 
increasing the endowment of Maynooth College, 
an Irish Catholic institution, and for the estab- 
lishment of *^ Godless colleges" in Ireland. Re- 
ferring to it, in his " History of Our Own Times," 
Mr. Justin McCarthy says : " He acted, perhaps, 
with a too sensitive chivalry. He had written a 
work, as all the world knows, on the relations of 
Church and State, and he did not think the views 
expressed in that book left him free to cooperate 



46 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

in the ministerial measure. Some staid politi- 
cians were shocked ; many more smiled ; not a 
few sneered. The public in general applauded 
the disinterestedness which dictated the young 
statesman's act." 

In his speech explaining the motives of his 
resignation, Mr. Gladstone said: "I am sensible 
how fallible my judgment is, and how easily I 
might have erred ; but still it has been my con- 
viction that although I was not to fetter my judg- 
ment as a member of Parliament by a reference to 
abstract theories, yet, on the other hand, it was 
absolutely due to the public and due to myself 
that I should, so far as in me lay, place myself in 
a position to form an opinion upon a matter of so 
great importance, that should not only be actually 
free from all bias or leaning with respect to any 
consideration whatsoever, but an opinion that 
should be unsuspected. On that account, I have 
taken a course most painful to myself in respect 
to personal feelings, and have separated myself 
from men with whom, and under whom, I have 
long acted in public life, and of whom I am bound 
to say — although I have now no longer the honor 
of serving my most gracious Sovereign — that 1 
continue to regard them with unaltered senti- 
ments both of public regard and private attach- 
ment." Mr. Gladstone added that he was not 
prepared to war against the religious measures of 
his friend, Sir Eobert Peel. He would not pre- 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 47 

judge such questions, but would give to them 
calm and deliberate consideration. A high tribute 
was paid to the retiring minister, both by Lord 
John Russell and the Premier. The latter avowed 
the highest respect and admiration for Mr. Glad- 
stone's character and abilities ; admiration only 
equaled by regard for his private character. He 
had been most unwilling to lose one whom he 
regarded as capable of the highest and most 
eminent services. By an act of strict conscien- 
tiousness, Mr. Gladstone thus severed himself 
from a ministry in which he had rapidly risen to 
power and influence. His motives were appre- 
ciated by men of all parties, and it was generally 
predicted that one so useful to the State could not 
long remain in the position of a private member. 

Nor was the fulfillment of the prediction long 
delayed. " Famine had forced Peel's hand " ; 
and in December, 1845, the " Times " announced 
that Parliament would be summoned for the first 
week in January, and that the Royal Speech 
would recommend an immediate consideration of 
the Corn Laws, preparatory to their total repeal. 
'^Few chapters of political history in modern 
times," says Mr. McCarthy, *'have given rise to 
more controversy than that which contains the 
story of Sir Robert Peel's administration in its 
dealing with the Corn Laws. Told in the briefest 
form, the story is that Peel came into office in 
1841 to maintain the Corn Laws, and that in 1846 



48 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

he repealed them. The controversy as to the 
wisdom or unwisdom of repealing the Corn Laws 
has long since come to an end. They who were 
the uncompromising opponents of Free Trade at 
that time are proud to call themselves its uncom- 
promising zealots now. Indeed, there is no more 
chance of a reaction against Free Trade in England 
than there is of a reaction against the rule of three. 
But the controversy still exists, and will proba- 
bly always be in dispute, as to the conduct of Sir 
Robert Peel. . . , Sir Robert Peel's government 
came into power distinctly pledged to uphold 
the principle of protection for home-grown grain. 
Four years after this. Sir Robert Peel proposed 
the total abolition of the corn duties. For this 
he was denounced by some members of his party 
in language more fierce and unmeasured than ever 
since has been applied to any leading statesman. 
Mr. Gladstone was never assailed by the staunchest 
supporter of the Irish Church in words so vitu- 
perative as those which rated Sir Robert Peel for 
his supposed apostasy. One eminent person, at 
least [Mr. Disraeli], made his first fame as a Par- 
liamentary orator by his denunciations of the great 
minister whom he had previously eulogized and 
supported. " 

The first result of Sir Robert Peel's announce- 
ment was a rupture of his Cabinet and the secession 
of several of its leading members ; in consequence 
of which, Sir Robert tendered his resignation to 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 49 

her Majesty. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, 
was accordingly summoned to form a ministry ; 
but, failing in tfc's, the Queen requested Sir Rob- 
ert to withdraw jis resignation. He reluctantly 
resumed office, a.id, when his reconstructed Cabi- 
net was made known, it was found that Mr. 
Gladstone had succeeded Lord Stanley as Secre- 
tary of State for the Colonies. 

Of course, in accepting office under these cir- 
cumstances, Mr. Gladstone pledged himself to go 
the full length of Peel's Free-Trade policy ; and 
Mr. Smith says : "It is no secret that the 
most advanced statesman on the Free- Trade ques- 
tion in the Peel Cabinet was Mr. Gladstone. The 
policy of the Government in regard to the great 
measure of 1846 was largely molded by him, and 
his representations of the effects of Free Trade on 
the industry of the country and the general well- 
being of the people strengthened the Premier in 
his resolve to sweep away the obnoxious corn 
laws. The pamphlet * on recent commercial legis- 
lation had prepared the way for the later momen- 
tous changes ; and to Mr. Gladstone is due much 
of the credit for the speedy consummation of the 
Free-Trade policy of the Peel ministry. In the 
official sphere he may be regarded, perhaps, as 
the leading pioneer of the movement." 

* While out of office Mr. Gladstone had published a pam- 
phlet entitled " Remarks upon Recent Commercial Legislation." 

4 



50 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

In view of this it is a remarkable and regret- 
able fact that, during the session in which the 
great measure was debated and carried, Mr. Glad- 
stone was without a seat in Parliament. The 
Duke of Newcastle, under whose patronage he 
had secured and held the seat for Newark, being 
a rigid Protectionist and a bitter opponent of the 
new policy, he felt that he could not continue to 
represent the borough without loss of dignity, and 
accordingly resigned. When he returned in 1847 
as Member for Oxford University, the Corn Law 
Eepeal Act was passed ; Sir Robert Peel, having 
accomplished his great work, and thereby alienated 
many of his supporters, was relegated to the Op- 
position benches ; and the Whigs were enjoying a 
new lease of power. 

The first important debate in which Mr. Glad- 
stone took part after his return was significant as 
indicating his growing liberality of opinion. In 
1841 he had crossed swords with Macaulay in op- 
posing the Jews Civil Disabilities Eemoval bill ; 
but, when in the general election of 1847 Baron 
Rothschild was returned for the city of London, 
and Lord John Russell proposed to enable him to 
take his seat by passing a bill affirming the eligibil- 
ity of Jews to all offices to which Roman Catholics 
were admissible by law, he supported the measure 
in a forcible and convincing speech. Explaining 
that, when he opposed the last law for the removal 
of Jewish disabilities, he had foreseen that, if we 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 51 

gave the Jew municipal, magisterial, and execu- 
tive functions, we could not refuse him legislative 
functions any longer, he continued: **The Jew 
was refused entrance into that House, because he 
would then be a maker of the laws ; but who made 
the maker of the law ? The constituencies ; and 
into these constituencies we had admitted the 
Jews. Now, were the constituencies Christian 
constituencies ? If they were, was it probable 
that the Parliament would cease to be a Christian 
Parliament?" He concluded by saying, *Hhat 
he was of opinion that, if they admitted Jews into 
Parliament, prejudice might be awakened for a 
while, but the good sense of the people would 
soon allay it, and members would have the conso- 
lation of knowing that in a case of difficulty they 
had yielded to a sense of justice, and by so doing 
had not disparaged religion nor lowered Christi- 
anity, but had rather elevated both in all reflect- 
ing and well-regulated minds." 

During the next two or three sessions Mr. 
Gladstone played the ordinary part of an active 
and vigilant member of the Opposition, partici- 
pating in most of the principal debates, defending 
the commercial policy inaugurated by Sir Robert 
Peel, and increasing his reputation both in the 
House and in the country. The most memorable 
debate of this period occurred during the session 
of 1850, and as his share of it Mr. Gladstone de- 
livered the finest and most powerful speech that 



52 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

he had yet made in Parliament — one which was 
recognized as fully entitled to rank with the re- 
markable orations of Lord Palmerston, Sir Eobert 
Peel, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Disraeli. The debate 
arose out of the affairs of Greece. The Greek 
Government having refused certain demands for 
compensation which the English Government had 
made on behalf of certain English subjects, Ad- 
miral Sir William Parker was ordered to proceed 
to Athens, for the purpose of obtaining satisfac- 
tion. Failing in this, the Admiral blockaded the 
Piraeus. *'The news of this somewhat high- 
handed proceeding produced dissatisfaction in 
certain quarters in England, the policy being con- 
demned as unworthy of the dignity, and discred- 
itable to the reputation, of a power like Great 
Britain. The debates in both Houses initiated 
upon this Greek question took a wider scope than 
the facts just enumerated, and eventually included 
our relations with France. The stability of the 
Whig administration depended upon the results 
of the discussions." Lord Palmerston, the For- 
eign Minister, whose policy was thus assailed, de- 
fended himself energetically in a speech of nearly 
five hours' duration. '' At its close he challenged 
the verdict of the House whether the principles 
which had guided the foreign policy of her Majes- 
ty's ministers had been proper and fitting, and 
whether, as a subject of ancient Rome could hold 
himself free from indignity by saying Civis Ro- 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 53 

manus sum, a British subject in a foreign country 
should not be protected by the vigilant eye and 
the strong arm of the Government against injus- 
tice and wrong." 

Mr. Gladstone in his speech went over the 
whole foreign relations of the Government, dis- 
cussed with much minuteness the special circum- 
stances of the quarrel with Greece, and replied in 
the following fine passage to Lord Palmerston's 
allusion to the Roman citizen : 

" Sir, great as is the influence and power of Britain, 
she can not afford to follow, for any length of time, a 
self-isolating policy. It would be a contravention of the 
law of nature and of God, if it were possible for any 
single nation of Christendom to emancipate itself from 
the obligations which bind all other nations, and to arro- 
gate, in the face of mankind, a position of peculiar privi- 
lege. And now I will grapple with the noble lord on 
the ground which he selected for himself, in the most 
triumphant portion of his speech, by his reference to 
those emphatic words, Cims Bomanus sum. He vaunted, 
amid the cheers of his supporters, that under his admin- 
istration an Englishman should be, throughout the world, 
what the citizen of Rome had been. What then, sir, 
was a Roman citizen? He was the member of a privi- 
leged caste; he belonged to a conquering race, to a na- 
tion that held all others bound down by the strong arm 
of power. For him there was to be an exceptional sys- 
tem of law ; for him principles were to be asserted, and 
by him rights were to be enjoyed, that were denied to 
the rest of the world. Is such, then, the view of the 
noble lord as to the relation which is to subsist between 



54 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

England and other countries ? Does he make the claim 
for us that we are to be uplifted upon a platform high 
above the standing-ground of all other nations? It is, 
indeed, too clear, not only from the expressions but from 
the whole tone of the speech of the noble viscount, that 
too much of this notion is lurking in his mind ; that he 
adopts, in part, that vain conception that we, forsooth, 
have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of 
abuse and imperfection, among the other countries of the 
world ; that we are to be the universal schoolmasters ; 
and that all those who hesitate to recognize our office 
can be governed only by prejudice or personal animosity, 
and should have the blind war of diplomacy forthwith 
declared against them. And certainly, if the business of 
a foreign secretary properly were to carry on diplomatic 
wars, all must admit that the noble lord is a master in 
the discharge of his functions. What, sir, ought a for- 
eign secretary to be? Is he to be like some gallant 
knight at a tournament of old, pricking forth into the lists, 
armed at all points, confiding in his sinews and his skill, 
challenging all comers for the sake of honor, and having 
no other duty than to lay as many as possible of his ad- 
versaries sprawling in the dust? If such is the idea of a 
good foreign secretary, I, for one, would vote to the 
noble lord his present appointment for his life. But, sir, 
I do not understand the duty of a secretary for foreign 
affairs to be of such a character. I understand it to be 
his duty to conciliate peace with dignity. I think it to 
be the very first of all his duties studiously to observe, 
and to exalt in honor among mankind, that great code of 
principles which is termed the law of nations, which the 
honorable and learned member for Sheffield has found, 
indeed, to be very vague in their nature, and greatly 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 55 

dependent on the discretion of each particular country, 
but in which I find, on the contrary, a great and noble 
monument of human wisdom, founded on the combined 
dictates of reason and experience, a precious inheritance 
bequeathed to us by the generations that have gone be- 
fore us, and a firm foundation on which we must take 
care to build whatever it may be our part to add to their 
acquisitions, if, indeed, we wish to maintain and to con- 
solidate the brotherhood of nations and to promote the 
peace and welfare of the world." 

Mr. Gladstone went on to contend that it was 
the insular temper of Englishmen and their self- 
glorifying tendency which the policy of the noble 
lord, and the doctrines of his supporters, tended 
so much to strengthen, and which had given to 
that policy the quarrelsome character that marked 
some of their speeches. Then came the perora- 
tion of his speech : 

"Sir, I say the policy of the noble lord tends to en- 
courage and confirm in us that which is our besetting 
fault and weakness, both as a nation and as individuals. 
Let an Englishman travel where he will as a private per- 
son, he is found in general to be upright, high-minded, 
brave, liberal, and true ; but with all this, foreigners are 
too often sensible of something that galls them in his 
presence, and I apprehend it is because he has too great 
a tendency to self-esteem — too little disposition to regard 
the feelings, the habits, and the ideas of others. Sir, I 
find this characteristic too plainly legible in the pohcy of 
the noble lord. I doubt not that use will be made of our 
present debate to work upon this peculiar weakness of 



56 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the English mind. The people will be told that those 
who oppose the motion are governed by personal mo- 
tives, have no regard for public principles, no enlarged 
ideas of national policy. You will take your case before 
a favorable jury, and you think to gain your verdict; 
but, sir, let the House of Commons be warned — let it 
warn itself — against all illusions. There is in this case 
also a course of appeal. There is an appeal, such as the 
honorable and learned member for Sheffield has made, 
from the one House of Parliament to the other. There 
is a further appeal from this House of Parliament to the 
people of England ; but, lastly, there is also an appeal 
from the people of England to the general sentiment of 
the civilized world ; and I, for my part, am of opinion 
that England will stand shorn of a chief part of her glory 
and pride if she shall be found to have separated herself, 
through the policy she pursues abroad, from the moral 
supports which the general and fixed convictions of 
mankind afibrd — if the day shall come when she may 
continue to excite the wonder and the fear of other 
nations, but in which she' shall have no part in their 
affection and regard. 

• " No, sir, let it not be so ; let us recognize, and recgo- 
nize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the 
strong; the principles of brotherhood among nations, and 
of their sacred independence. When we are asking for the 
maintenance of the rights which belong to our fellow sub- 
jects resident in Greece, let us do as we would be done by, 
and let us pay all the respect to a feeble state, and to the 
infancy of free institutions, which we should desire and 
should exact from others toward their maturity and their 
strength. Let us refrain from all gratuitous and arbi- 
trary meddling in the internal concerns of other states, 



IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. 57 

even as we should resent the same interference if it were 
attempted to be practiced toward ourselves. Tf the noble 
lord has indeed acted on these principles, let the Gov- 
ernment to which lie belongs have your verdict in its 
favor ; but, if he has departed from them, as I contend, 
and as I humbly think and urge upon you that it has 
been too amply proved, then the House of Commons must 
not shrink from the performance of its duty under what- 
ever expectations of momentary obloquy or reproach, 
because we shall have done what is right ; we shall enjoy 
the peace of our own consciences, and receive, whether 
a little sooner or a little later, the approval of the public 
voice for having entered our solemn protest against a 
system of policy which we believe, nay, which we know, 
whatever may be its first aspect, must, of necessity, in 
its final results be unfavorable even to the security of 
British subjects resident abroad, which it professes so 
much to study — unfavorable to the dignity of the coun- 
try, which the motion of the honorable and learned 
member asserts it preserves — and equally unfavorable to 
that other great and sacred object, which also it suggests 
to our recollection, the maintenance of peace with the 
nations of the world." 

Speaking of the result of this great debate, 
Mr. Justin McCarthy says : *' Nothing could be 
more complete than Palmerston's success. ' Civis 
Romanus' settled the matter. Who was in the 
House of Commons so rude that he would not be 
a Roman ? Who was there so lacking in patri- 
otic spirit that would not have his countrymen 
as good as any Roman citizen of them all. It 
was to little purpose that Mr. Gladstone, in a 



58 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

speech of singular argumentative power, pointed 
out that * a Roman citizen was the member of a 
privileged caste, of a victorious and conquering 
nation, of a nation that held all others bound 
down by the strong arm of power — which had 
one law for him and another for the rest of the 
world, which asserted in his favor principles 
which it denied to all others.' It was in vain that 
Mr. Gladstone asked whether Lord Palmerston 
thought that this was the position which it would 
become a civilized and Christian nation like Eng- 
land to claim for her citizens. The glory of being 
a ^ Civis Romanus ' was far too strong for any 
mere argument drawn from fact and common 
sense to combat against it. The phrase had car- 
ried the day. ... In vain was the calm, grave, 
studiously moderate remonstrance of Sir Robert 
Peel, who, while generously declaring that Pal- 
merston's speech ' made us all proud of the man 
who delivered it,' yet recorded his firm protest 
against the style of policy which Palmerston's elo- 
quence had endeavored to glorify. The victory 
was all with Palmerston. He had, in the words 
of Shakespeare's Rosalind, wrestled well, and 
overthrown more than his enemies." 



THE PRISONS OF NAPLES. 59 

V. 

THE PRISOKS OF NAPLES. 

In the winter of 1850-51 Mr. Gladstone 
spent several months in Naples. It was a sort 
of holiday trip, undertaken, as he himself ex- 
plained, for "purely domestic" reasons; but 
while there he learned that a large number of the 
citizens of Naples, who had formed the opposi- 
tion in the Chamber of Deputies, had been exiled 
or imprisoned by King Ferdinand, and that up- 
ward of twenty thousand of that monarch's sub- 
jects (as reported) had been thrown into prison 
on a charge of political disaffection. In the city 
of Naples alone, he discovered, there were some 
hundreds under indictment, capitally. Out of 
one hundred and forty deputies — this being the 
average of those who came to Naples to exer- 
cise the functions of the Legislative Chamber — > 
seventy-six had either been arrested or had gone 
into exile ; so that the Government of Naples 
had ** consummated its audacity by putting into 
prison, or driving into banishment undergone for 
the sake of escaping prison, an actual majority 
of the representatives of the people." 

*^So much," says Mr. Smith, "for the num- 
bers of those incarcerated. But the mode of pro- 
cedure also was arbitrary in the extreme. The 
law of Naples recjuired that personal liberty 



t)0 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

should be inviolable, except under a warrant 
from a court of justice. Yet, in utter defiance of 
this law, the Government watched the people, 
paid domiciliary visits, ransacked houses, seized 
papers and effects, and tore up floors at pleasure 
under pretense of searching for arms, imprisoned 
men by the score, by the hundred, by the thou- 
sand, without any warrant whatever, sometimes 
without even any written authority at all, or any- 
thing beyond the word of a policeman, constantly 
without any statement whatever of the nature of 
the offense. Charges were fabricated to get rid 
of inconvenient persons. Perjury and forgery 
were resorted to in order to establish charges, 
and the whole mode of conducting trials was a 
burlesque of justice. Describing the dungeons, 
Mr. Gladstone says : * The prisons of Naples, as 
is well known, are another name for the extreme 
of filth and horror. I have really seen something 
of them, but not the worst. This I have seen, 
my lord : the official doctors not going to the 
sick prisoners, but the sick prisoners, men almost 
with death on their faces, toiling up-stairs to 
them at that charnel-house of the Vicaria, be- 
cause the lower regions of such a palace of dark- 
ness are too foul and loathsome to allow it to be 
expected that professional men should consent to 
earn bread by entering them.' The diet was 
abominable, and the filth of the prisons unen- 
durable. After narrating the hardships of one 



THE PRISONS OF NAPLES. 61 

Pironte, formerly a judge, and of the Baron Por- 
cari, Mr. Gladstone deals with the case of the 
distinguished patriot, Carlo Poerio. He was a 
refined and accomplished gentleman, a copious 
and elegant speaker, a respected and blameless 
character, yet he had been arrested and con- 
demned for treason. After a pretty full 
examination of his case, the writer said : ' The 
condemnation of such a man for treason is a pro- 
ceeding just as conformable to the laws of truth, 
justice, decency, and fair play, and to the common 
sense of the community — in fact, just as great and 
gross an outrage on them all — as would be a like 
condemnation in this country of any of our best- 
known public men — Lord John Russell, or Lord 
Lansdowne, or Sir James Graham, or yourself. 
There was no name dearer to the English nation 
than was that of Poerio to his Neapolitan fellow 
countrymen. ' The case of Settembrini was also 
a mournful and remarkable one. The capital 
sentence passed upon him was not executed, but 
he was reserved for a fate much harder — double 
irons for life on a remote sea-girt rock, and it 
was feared that he was directly subjected to physi- 
cal torture. The mode specified was that of 
thrusting sharp instruments under the finger 
nails. Mr. Gladstone narrates in detail the in- 
iquitous proceedings in connection with Poerio, 
who had been tried and condemned on the sole 
accusation of a worthless character named Jervo* 



62 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

lino. Yet Poerio would have been acquitted by a 
division of four to four of his judges, had not 
Navarro (who sat as a judge while directly con- 
cerned in the charge against the prisoner), by the 
distinct use of intimidation, procured the number 
necessary for sentence. A statement is furnished, 
on the authority of an eye-witness, as to the inhu- 
manity with which invalid prisoners were treated 
by the Grand Criminal Court at Naples ; and Mr. 
Gladstone also minutely describes the manner of 
the imprisonment of Poerio and sixteen of his 
co-accused. Each prisoner bore a weight of chain 
amounting to thirty-two pounds, and for no pur- 
pose whatever were these chains undone. All 
the prisoners were confined night and day in a 
small room, which may be described as among 
the closest of dungeons. But Poerio was con- 
demned after this to even a still lower depth of 
calamity. * Never before have I conversed,' says 
Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Poerio, *and never 
probably shall I converse again, with a cultivated 
and accomplished gentleman, of whose innocence, 
obedience to law, and love of his country, I was 
as firmly and as rationally assured as of your 
lordship's or that of any other man of the very 
highest character, while he stood before me 
amid surrounding felons, and clad in the vile 
uniform of guilt and shame. But he is now gone 
where he will scarcely have the opportunity even 
of such conversation. I can not honestly sup- 



THE PRISONS OF NAPLES. 63 

press my conviction that the object in the case of 
Poerio, as a man of mental power sufficient to be 
feared, is to obtain tlie scaffold's aim by means 
more cruel than the scaffold, and without the 
outcry which the scaffold would create. ' " 

Mr. Gladstone's sympathies were warmly en- 
listed on behalf of the oppressed Neapolitans, 
and he felt it his duty to attempt the redress of 
evils which were ^^a scandal to the name of civili- 
zation in Europe." On his return home, there- 
fore, he published two letters, addressed to the 
Earl of Aberdeen, denouncing the Neapolitan 
system of government, and reciting the facts 
given in the preceding paragraphs. Three reasons, 
he explained, had led him to adopt this course : 
"First, that the present practices of the Govern- 
ment of Naples, in reference to real or supposed 
political offenders, are an outrage upon religion, 
upon civilization, upon humanity, and upon 
decency. Secondly, that these practices are 
certainly, and even rapidly, doing the work of 
Republicanism in that country — a political creed 
which has little natural or habitual root in the 
character of the people. Thirdly, that, as a 
member of the Conservative party in one of the 
great family of European nations, I am compelled 
to remember that that party stands in virtual and 
real, though perhaps unconscious, alliance with 
all the established governments of Europe as 
such ; and that, according to the measure of its 



64 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

influence, they suffer more or less of moral detri- 
ment from its reverses, and derive strength and 
encouragement from its successes." 

These letters excited great attention through- 
out Europe, and became the theme of a most 
virulent and violent controversy, which raged in 
France and Italy, as well as in England. The 
Neapolitan Government published an official reply, 
and the entire gang of subsidized scribblers 
throughout the Continent exhausted their venom 
upon the *^ audacious pamphleteer." The author, 
properly enough, regarded all this as proof that 
*^ the arrow has shot deep into the mark "; and in 
a rejoinder to the reply of the Neapolitan Govern- 
ment, issued in 1852, reiterated his charges, and 
fortified them with additional and confirmatory 
evidence. Moreover, any doubt as to the im- 
pression he had made upon those whom he desired 
to impress was set at rest by a speech of Lord 
Palmerston's, in the House of Commons, in which 
his lordship took occasion to say : " Mr. Glad- 
stone has done himself, I think, very great honor 
by the course he pursued at Naples, and by the 
course he has followed since ; for I think that, 
when you see an English gentleman, who goes to 
pass a winter at Naples, instead of confining 
himself to those amusements that abound in 
that city, instead of diving into volcanoes and 
exploring excavated cities — when we see him 
going to courts of justice, visiting prisons, 



THE PRISONS OF NAPLES. 65 

descending into dungeons, and examining great 
numbers of the cases of unfortunate victims of 
illegality and injustice with a view afterward to 
enlist public opinion in the endeavor to remedy 
those abuses — I think that is a course that does 
honor to the person who pursues it; and, con- 
curring in feeling with him that the influence of 
public opinion in Europe might have some useful 
effect in setting such matters right, I thought it 
my duty to send copies of his pamphlet to our 
ministers at the various courts of Europe, direct- 
ing them to give to each Government copies of the 
pamphlet, in the hope that, by affording them an 
opportunity of reading it, they might be led to 
use their influence in promoting what is the object 
of my honorable and gallant friend — a remedy for 
the evils to which he has referred." 

This announcement by the Foreign Secretary 
was warmly cheered by the House ; and, when, a 
few days afterward, he was requested by Prince 
Castelcicala, the Neapolitan ambassador, to for- 
ward the reply of the Neapolitan Government to 
the different European courts to which Mr. Glad- 
stone's pamphlet had been sent, his lordship 
promptly replied that he ^^must decline being 
accessory to the circulation of a pamphlet which, 
in my opinion, does no credit to its writer, or the 
Government which he defends, or to the political 
party of which he professes to be the champion." 
He also informed the Prince that information re- 
5 



66 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ceived from other sources led him to the conclu- 
sion that Mr. Gladstone had by no means over- 
stated the various evils which he had described ; 
and that he (Lord Palmerston) regretted that the 
Neapolitan Government had not set to work 
earnestly and effectually to correct the manifold 
and grave abuses which clearly existed. 

The immediate effect of Mr. Gladstone's de- 
nunciations was not commensurate, it must be 
confessed, with the excitement they aroused ; but 
*' they bore fruit later, when Garibaldi and a free 
people marched into Naples, and King Bomba, 
his priests, his women, and his court, ran out " ; 
and Garibaldi himself declared long afterward 
that this eloquent protest was **the first trumpet- 
call of Italian liberty." 



VI. 

CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 

In" the month of June, 1850, occurred that 
lamentable accident by which Sir Robert Peel 
lost his life, and England one of her most illus- 
trious statesmen. This untoward event was fol- 
lowed by the disintegration of the party which 
had borne Peel's name, and been held together 
by his strong will and undisputed, ascendancy. 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 67 

" Several of its members formally Joined the Con- 
servative ranks ; but others, such as Sir James 
Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert, 
held themselves aloof both from the Whigs and 
the Tories. They did not feel themselves at 
liberty at once to throw in their lot with the 
former, for Conservative traditions still exercised 
considerable influence over them, and they could 
not join the latter, as they were already the sub- 
jects of strong liberalizing tendencies." 

By slow degrees, in the case of Mr. Gladstone, 
these latter tendencies gained the ascendant, and 
by the end of the session of 1852 his alienation 
from the Conservative party was complete, though 
he did not formally join the Liberal ranks until 
some years afterward. He and his friends Sidney 
Herbert and Sir James Graham belonged for a 
time to neither party ; and, standing aloof, their 
ability acknowledged and their motives above sus- 
picion, they probably exercised more influence 
upon the House of Commons than either group 
on the two front benches. 

"U Mr. Gladstone," says Mr. Lucy, "had 
died before 1853, he would have been accounted 
a brilliant politician cut off before the ripeness of 
years had brought him fullness of opportunity. 
He had done great things, but their character was 
rather critical than constructive. He had spoken 
brilliantly, but had not achieved anything likely 
to secure him permanent fame. In 1853, how 



68 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ever, the square peg was happily thrust into the 
square hole, and Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. His remarkable ability for 
dealing with figures, and evolving a comprehen- 
sive scheme out of a multiplicity of details, had 
been shown in the Tariffs bill already alluded to. 
In 1852 he showed in stronger light his mastery 
over the science of national finance. At this 
epoch Lord Derby was Premier and Mr. Disraeli 
was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The latter had 
introduced his first budget in an elaborate speech, 
extending over five hours and a quarter, and 
which, unless it greatly differed from all his ora- 
tions of similar proportions, must have been in- 
tolerably heavy. To one listener, however, it 
possessed a keen and enthralling interest. Mr. 
Gladstone had not, up to this period, entered 
upon that constant attitude of personal antago- 
nism with Mr. Disraeli which subsequent events 
and relative positions created. He had answered 
and been answered by him in the course of debate. 
But the House and the country had not as yet 
come to look with keen interest for what might 
follow upon a conflict between these two men, 
who have no possession in common except genius. 
Circumstances, however, were rapidly tending 
toward the creation of the condition of affairs we 
are now familiar with. Mr. Gladstone could 
never forgive Mr. Disraeli's bitter attacks on his 
old friend and master. Sir Robert Peel, and had 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 69 

loudly cheered Sidney Herbert when, in a moment 
of passionate indignation, that gentleman had 
pointed to the Treasury bench, where now pros- 
perously sat the detractor of the great Free- 
Trader, and asked the House to behold in him 
*a spectacle of humiliation.' When Mr. Dis- 
raeli essayed to deal with finance, Mr. Gladstone 
with fierce delight sprung upon him, and gripped 
him so sorely that he made an end of him, his 
budget, and the Ministry of which he was the 
prop. Lord Derby resigned, and Lord Aberdeen, 
being called upon to form a ministry, invited Mr. 
Gladstone to take the office out of which he had 
driven Mr. Disraeli." 

This first encounter between the two great 
Parliamentary rivals of a generation is interesting 
enough to pause over for a moment. * * The de- 
bate," says Mr. Justin McCarthy, "was one of 
the finest of the kind ever heard in Parliament 
during our time. The excitement on both sides 
was intense. The rivalry was hot and eager. Mr. 
Disraeli was animated by all the power of desper- 
ation, and was evidently in a mood neither to 
give nor to take quarter. He assailed Sir Charles 
Wood, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, with 
a vehemence and even a virulence which certainly 
added much to the piquancy and interest of the 
discussion so far as listeners were concerned, but 
which more than once went to the verge of the 
limits of Parliamentary decorum. It was in the 



70 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

course of this speech that Disraeli, leaning across 
the table and directing his words full at Sir 
Charles Wood, declared, * I care not to be the right 
honorable gentleman's critic, but, if he has learned 
his business, he has yet to learn that petulance is 
not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective.' 
The House had not heard the concluding word of 
Disraeli's bitter and impassioned speech, when at 
two o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone leaped 
to his feet to answer him. Then began that long 
Parliamentary duel which only knew a truce when, 
at the close of the session of 1876, Mr. Disraeli 
crossed the threshold of the House of Commons 
for the last time, thenceforward to take his place 
among the peers as Lord Beaconsfield. During 
all the intervening four-and-twenty years these 
two men were rivals in power and in Parliamen- 
tary debate as much as Pitt and Fox had been. 
Their opposition, like that of Pitt and Fox, was 
one of temperament and character as well as of 
genius, position, and political opinion. The ri- 
valry of this first heated and eventful night was a 
splendid display. Those who had thought it im- 
possible that any impression could be made upon 
the House after the speech of Mr. Disraeli, had 
to acknowledge that a yet greater impression was 
produced by the unprepared reply of Mr. Glad- 
stone. The House divided about four o'clock in 
the morning, and the Government were left in 
a minority of nineteen. Mr. Disraeli took the 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 71 

defeat with his characteristic composure. The 
morning was cold and wet. ' It will be an un- 
pleasant day for going to Osborne,' he quietly 
remarked to a friend as they went down Westmin- 
ster Hall together and looked out into the dreary 
streets. That day, at Osborne, the resignation 
of the Ministry was formally placed in the hands 
of the Queen." 

The acceptance by Mr. Gladstone of a post in 
the Aberdeen Ministry marked his final passage 
across the great gulf that separates Toryism from 
Liberalism. Lord Aberdeen was not what in 
these days would be called a Liberal ; but neither 
was he a Tory — in fact, he was successor to the 
overthrown Tory Ministry — and from this time 
on the breach between Mr. Gladstone and his old 
political associates was irrevocable. 

The transition being now complete, this seems 
the proper place to explain how so great a change 
of opinion was brought about, and for this pur- 
pose we quote another striking passage from Mr. 
McCarthy : 

^*Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into Liberal con- 
victions. At the time when he joined the Coalition 
Ministry he was still regarded as one who had 
scarcely left the camp of Toryism, and who had 
only joined that Ministry because it was a coali- 
tion. Years after, he was applied to by the late 
Lord Derby to join a ministry formed by him ; 
and it was not supposed that there was anything 



72 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

unreasonable in the proposition. The first im- 
pulse toward Liberal principles was given to his 
mind, probably, by his change with his leader 
from protection to free trade. When a man 
like Gladstone saw that his traditional principles 
and those of his party had broken down in any 
one direction, it was but natural that he should 
begin to question their endurance in other direc- 
tions. The whole fabric of belief was built up 
together. Gladstone's was a mind of that order 
that sees a principle in everything, and must, to 
adopt the phrase of a great preacher, make the 
plowing as much a part of religious duty as the 
praying. The interests of religion seemed to him 
bound up with the creed of Conservatism ; the 
principles of protection must, probably, at one 
time have seemed a part of the whole creed, of 
which one article was as sacred as another. His 
intellect and his principles, however, found them- 
selves compelled to follow the guidance of his 
leader in the matter of free trade ; and, when 
inquiry thus began, it was not very likely soon to 
stop. He must have seen how much the working 
of such a principle as that of protection became a 
class interest in England, and how impossible it 
would have been for it to continue long in exist- 
ence under an extended and popular suffrage. In 
other countries the fallacy of protection did not 
show itself so glaringly in the eyes of the poorer 
classes, for in other countries it was not the staple 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 73 

food of the population that became the principal 
object of a protective duty. But in England 
the bread on which the poorest had to live was 
made to pay a tax for the benefit of landlords and 
farmers. As long as one believed this to be a 
necessary condition of a great unquestionable 
creed, it was easy for a young statesman to recon- 
cile himself to it. It might bear cruelly on indi- 
viduals, or even multitudes ; but so would the 
law of gravitation, as Mill has remarked, bear 
harshly on the best of men when it dashed, him 
down from a height and broke his bones. It 
would be idle to question the existence of the law 
on that account, or to disbelieve the whole teach- 
ing of the physical science which explains its 
movements. But when Mr. Gladstone came to 
be convinced that there was no such law as the 
protection principle at all ; that it was a mere 
sham ; that to believe in it was to be guilty of an 
economic heresy — then it was impossible for him 
not to begin questioning the genuineness of the 
wliole system of political thought, of which it 
formed but a part. Perhaps, too, he was impelled 
toward Liberal principles at home by seeing what 
the effects of opposite doctrines had been abroad. 
He rendered memorable service to the Liberal 
cause of Europe by his eloquent protest against 
the brutal treatment of Baron Poerio and other 
Liberals of Naples who were imprisoned by the 
Neapolitan king. ... In rendering service to 



74 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Liberalism and to Europe, he rendered service 
also to his own intelligence. He helped to set 
free his own spirit as well as the Neapolitan people. 
We find him, as his career goes on, dropping the 
traditions of his youth, always rising higher in 
Liberalism, and not going back." 

Addressing himself with characteristic energy 
to the work of his new position, Mr. Gladstone, 
shortly after he became Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, introduced a scheme for the reduction of 
the National Debt, which was adopted by the 
House, and which, together with other financial 
reforms, enabled the country to meet with ease 
the strain of the Crimean War. *^0n the 18th 
of April, 1853," says Mr. Lucy, "Mr. Gladstone 
delivered the first of what has proved to be a long 
series of budget speeches unsurpassed in Parlia- 
mentary history. There are some members in 
the present House who have a vivid recollection 
of this occasion. Expectation stood on tiptoe. 
The House was crowded in every part, and it re- 
mained crowded and tireless, while for the space 
of five hours Mr. Gladstone poured forth a flood 
of oratory which made arithmetic astonishingly 
easy, and gave an unaccustomed grace to statistics. 
Merely as an oratorical display, the speech was a 
rare treat to the crowded assembly that heard it, 
and to the innumerable company which some 
hours later read it. But the form was rendered 
doubly enchanting by the substance. It was clear 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 75 

that Mr. Gladstone could not only adorn the ex- 
position of finance with the gifts of oratory, but 
he could control the developments of finance with 
a master-hand. His scheme was a bold one, and 
of a kind altogether different from a succession 
recently commended to public notice. The young 
and untried Chancellor of the Exchequer found 
himself with a surplus of something over three 
quarters of a million. This was not much. But 
it was enough to have made things pleasant in one 
or two influential quarters, and he might have 
hoped for a fuller purse next year. To have taken 
this course, to have dribbled away the surplus, 
and practically to have left matters where they 
stood, would moreover have saved him an infini- 
tude of trouble, and relieved him from a tremen- 
dous risk. Scorning these considerations, and 
plunging into the troubled sea with the confident 
daring of genius, he positively increased taxation, 
chiefly by manipulation of the income tax, and 
was thereby enabled, in a wholesale manner that 
seems scarcely less than magical, to reduce or 
absolutely abolish the duties on nearly three hun- 
dred articles of commerce of daily use. Of course 
the secret of the financier's magic lay in that 
sound principle which he may be said to have 
inaugurated in British finance, and under the 
extended application of which trade and com- 
merce have advanced with leaps and bounds. He 
reckoned upon that property in national finance 



76 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

which is known as the ' elasticity of revenue^ ' 
and which is now safely, and as a matter of cal- 
culation, counted upon presently to make good 
deficiencies immediately accruing upon reduction 
of taxation. There is nothing remarkable in the 
adoption of this principle now, any more than 
there is in the application of a lighted match to a 
gas-burner when we want light in a darkened 
room. But in 1853 the experiment was as novel 
and its results as surprising as would have been 
the introduction of a blazing gas-chandelier in 
the House of Commons when William Pitt was 
explaining his budget of 1783. Perhaps the most 
remarkable thing in connection with Mr. Glad- 
stone's first budget was the confidence with which 
its predictions were accepted. Everywhere it was 
applauded, and, though Mr. Disraeli, as the leader 
of the Opposition, supported an amendment 
against it, this was a matter of course. Equally, 
as a matter of course, the budget resolutions 
were approved, and the beneficial reign of sound 
finance, inspired by rare genius and directed by 
superlative energy, forthwith commenced." 

Eeferring to this first budget, Mr. Justin 
McCarthy says that the speech with which it was 
introduced ''was regarded as a positive curiosity 
of financial exposition. It was a performance 
that belonged to the department of the fine arts. 
The speech occupied several hours, and assur- 
edly no listener wished it shorter by a single sen* 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 77 

tence. Pitt, we read, had the same art of mak- 
ing a budget speech a fascinating discourse ; but 
in our time no minister lias had this gift except 
Mr. Gladstone. Each time that he essayed the 
same task subsequently he accomplished just the 
same success." 

So great was their attraction that these annual 
budget speeches came to be regarded as the great 
events of the successive sessions, and regularly 
drew crowds such as are rarely brought together 
in the House of Commons save by the most mo- 
mentous debates ; and each successive budget 
strengthened the public confidence in Mr. Glad- 
stone's capacity for his work. *'It was felt," 
says Mr. Moles worth (in his "History of Eng- 
land from the Year 1830 ") " by all classes of per- 
sons throughout the country that its financial 
operations were now directed by a master-hand ; 
that the work which Peel had so ably commenced 
was being carried out by Gladstone, not in a spirit 
of servile imitation, but with a bold originality 
of conception, and a happy force and eloquence 
of expression, which placed him fully on a level 
with the lamented statesman whose work he was 
successfully endeavoring to complete. The peo- 
ple, therefore, submitted cheerfully to the burden 
of a heavy and oppressive tax, in the full convic- 
tion that the continuance of it was necessary in 
order to enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
to place the national finances on a footing which 



78 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

would increase the wealth and well-being of all 
classes of the people. " 



VII. 

THE CRIMEAN WAR. 

''Never, perhaps," says Mr. Molesworth, 
" had the condition and prospects of the nation 
been more satisfactory than they were during 
the later months of 1853. The Parliamentary 
session liad been fruitful of important measures. 
Tlie ^linistry appeared to command general con- 
fidence, and to be likely to remain in office for a 
long time ; the finances of the country, under 
the able management of Mr. Gladstone, were in 
a condition of progressive improvement : trade 
and manufactures were flourishing in almost all 
their departments. It was true that the harvest 
wa« not all that could be desired : but this was 
to a great extent compensated by the freeness 
with which corn could now be drawn from all 
parts of the world to supply the deficiencies of 
our own crops. The nation seemed to be enter- 
ing on a period of unbounded prosperity and pro- 
gress : but a dark cloud Wiis slowly rising in the 
East, and casting its ominous shadows on the 
fair prospect." 



THE CRIMEAN WAR. 79 

It would bo beyond the purpose or compass 
of this book to enter into a detailed account of 
the causes and progress of the Crimean War. 
The complications in which it began had their 
source in a miserable squabble between Latin and 
Greek monks about what they called the Holy 
Places — that is to say, the places which were 
traditionally regarded as the scenes of Christ's 
birth and sufferings ; but the chief object of con- 
tention was the possession of the key of the great 
door of the church at Bethlehem, and the right 
to place a silver star in the cave or grotto in which 
it was alleged that the Saviour of the world was 
born, and which was covered by the sacred editice. 

The quarrel differed in no respect from dozens 
of others that arise from time to time in the same 
connection, and would easily have been settled or 
compromised : but. unfortunately, the cause of the 
Greeks was adopted by the Russian Government, 
while that of the Latins was championed by the 
new French Government, each endeavoring by ne- 
gotiations with the Porte to secure the triumph of 
the party whose cause it espoused. " The Rus- 
sian Government in all probability cared little 
about the squabble, and the French Government 
nothing at all. But political considerations led 
both parties to press the matter with an earnest- 
ness out of all proportion to their real opinion of 
its importance. The Russian emperor was not 
disposed to yield an inch to the new French Gov- 



80 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ernment, which he had reluctantly and ungra- 
ciously recognized ; and the French emperor durst 
not allow himself to be humiliated by the Czar. 
He knew that in upholding the claims of the 
Latins he was maintaining a cause that was very 
dear to the majority of the French Catholics ; 
and that nothing would be more likely to bring 
support to his government from the people of 
France, and especially from the Liberal party of 
that country, now estranged from and hostile to 
him, than a firm attitude toward Russia. There 
is, however, no reason to suppose that the French 
emperor was anxious for war. He seems, on the 
contrary, to have used every effort to bring the 
contest to a peaceful and honorable termination ; 
but, having once entered on it, he could not draw 
back." 

The Turks, in their indifference, would cheer- 
fully have given twenty keys, if by this means 
they could have satisfied the contending parties. 
But neither party was disposed to accept a compro- 
mise, and, unfortunately, as the dispute went on, 
the question of the Holy Places became compli- 
cated with another and still more dangerous ques- 
tion — that of the protectorate over the Greek 
Christians in Turkey which the Czar claimed 
under a clause of the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kain- 
ardji, made in 1774. This claim enlisted Tur- 
key in the quarrel and greatly intensified it ; and 
at last (July 2, 1853) the Czar Nicholas cut 



THE CRIMEAN WAR. 81 

the Gordian knot of diplomacy by dispatching 
two divisions of his army across the Pruth to take 
possession of the Danubian Principalities. Even 
this menacing step did not put an end to negotia- 
tions, but all expedients failed, and before the 
end of the year Turkey had formally declared war 
against Russia, and France and England were 
vigorously preparing for the conflict. 

In the earlier stages of the dispute the Czar 
appears to have counted upon the neutrality, if 
not the active sympathy, of England ; but English- 
men have always been sensitive to any Russian 
advance toward the Mediterranean as menacing 
the connection with India, and, as soon as the con- 
troversy assumed a warlike phase, it became evi- 
dent that France and England would fight the 
battle as allies. 

Yet England's participation in the war was 
essentially the work of her people rather than of 
her statesmen. Lord Aberdeen was strenuously 
opposed to war, and nearly all his Cabinet shared 
his feeling. This was especially the case with 
Mr. Gladstone, who, on humanitarian as well as 
on national grounds, was opposed to the arbitra- 
ment of arms. The Premier had gone so far as 
to resolve not to remain at the head of the Gov- 
ernment unless he could maintain peace, and it 
was understood that Mr. Gladstone also would re- 
fuse to hold a position in a war ministry. 

Lord Palmerston was the only member of the 
6 



82 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Cabinet who was eager for war, and he, backed up 
by the warlike enthusiasm of the people, and 
aided by the blunders of the Russian Govern- 
ment, carried the day. The occupation of the 
Principalities had aroused a strong feeling of re- 
sentment throughout Europe, but especially in 
England; the so-called ** massacre of Sinope" 
stimulated the war feeling almost to the pitch of 
frenzy ; and on the 28th of March, 1854, Eng- 
land formally declared war against Eussia. 

The war thus initiated entailed on England an 
exceedingly heavy expenditure, and upon Mr. 
Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, fell 
the task of providing the necessary means. In- 
stead of that remission of taxation to which he had 
looked forward, and for which he had smoothed 
the way, he was called upon to prepare a war 
budget. Not only was the surplus swallowed up, 
but he was compelled to increase the income tax, 
the spirit duties, and the malt tax. *' Faced by 
no ordinary difficulties," says Mr. Smith, "Mr. 
Gladstone's fertility in resource was again ap- 
parent at this juncture. He conceived a scheme 
by which the country should not be permanently 
burdened with the expenses of the impending 
war. Prince Albert, in a letter to Baron Stock- 
mar, referred to this plan. Mr. Gladstone desired 
to pay for the war out of current revenue, pro- 
vided it did not require more than ten millions 
sterling beyond the ordinary expenditure. In 



THE CRIMEAN WAR. 83 

order to meet tliis extra charge, however, he had 
no option but to increase the taxes. Mr. Disraeli 
— in duty bound, perhaps, as the mouthpiece of 
a strong Opposition — propounded a different 
scheme. He desired to borrow, thus increasing 
the debt ; he was opposed to the imposition of 
any fresh taxes. ' The former course,' said the 
Prince Consort to his friend, *is manly, states- 
manlike, and honest ; the latter is convenient, 
cowardly, and perhaps popular.' But in a re- 
markable manner the people of England rose to 
the exigencies of the situation. They approved 
the plans of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
though fraught with temporary inconvenience. 
Mr. Gladstone had not misinterpreted the feeling 
of the country. It was ready to bear the burden 
which it in reality called down upon itself, and to 
meet, as they occurred, the expenses of the war. 
Never was patriotism more strongly displayed than 
at this period. A minister may frequently ac- 
quire popularity by leaving to succeeding genera- 
tions the discharge of those pecuniary liabilities 
which arise in connection with exceptional events. 
But Mr. Gladstone fought against this policy. 
Though, as he said, * every good motive and every 
bad motive, combated only by the desire of the 
approval of honorable men and by conscientious 
rectitude — every motive of ease, of comfort, and 
of certainty spring forward in his mind to induce 
a chancellor of the exchequer to become the 



84 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

first man to recommend a loan ' — he resisted the 
temptation, and was rewarded by the support of 
Parliament and the country." 

Unfortunately, as the war went on, the ex- 
penses became so enormous that it was impossible 
to adhere strictly to the " manly and statesman- 
like" policy of bringing the income up to the 
expenditure. Loans had to be resorted to ; but, 
throughout, Mr. Gladstone acted as consistently 
as possible on the theory that those who make 
war should pay for it, and not throw the burden 
upon posterity. And it was largely due to his 
skillful finance that England was so little crippled 
by an enormously costly conflict, which disorgan- 
ized the industry of more than half of Europe. 

In other respects, howeyer, the management 
of affairs was far from satisfactory. For nearly 
forty years England had been at peace, and the 
sudden and violent strain of an unexpected war 
showed that every department of the service was 
either disorganized or hampered by routine. The 
army, whenever it had the opportunity, covered 
itself with glory ; but the news sent home during 
the winter showed that there were foes far more 
formidable than the Russians — cold, sickness, and 
gross incompetence. The intensity of the cold 
was so great that no one might dare to touch any 
metal substance in the open air with his bare 
hand under penalty of leaving the skin behind 
him ; yet the soldiers had to face this weather 



THE CRIMEAN WAR, 85 

without tents, without blankets, and in many 
cases without shoes. The hospitals for the sick 
and wounded were in such an utterly chaotic con- 
dition that, but for the timely arrival of Florence 
Nightingale with her trained staff of nurses, this 
essential branch of the service must have wholly 
collapsed. ^' In some instances medical stores were 
left to decay at Varna, or were found lying useless 
in the holds of vessels in Balaklava Bay, which 
were needed for the wounded at Scutari. The 
medical officers were able and zealous men ; the 
stores were provided and paid for, so far as our 
Government was concerned ; but the stores were 
not brought to the medical men. These had their 
hands all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured 
by the sight of sufferings which they were unable 
to relieve for want of the commonest appliances 
of the hospital. The most extraordinary instances 
of blunder and confusion were constantly coming 
to light. Great consignments of boots arrived, 
and were found to be all for the left foot. Mules 
for the conveyance of stores were contracted for 
and delivered, but delivered so that they came 
into the hands of the Eussians, and not of us. 
Shameful frauds were perpetrated in the instance 
of some of the contracts for preserved meat. 
* One man's preserved meat,' exclaimed ' Punch,' 
with bitter humor, * is another man's poison.' " 

All these things, as they gradually became 
known, aroused a passion of indignation among 



86 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the people at home ; and this indignation was not 
long in making itself felt in the House of Com- 
mons. Mr. Eoebuck, in January, 1855, moved 
for the appointment of a select committee " to 
inquire into the condition of our army before 
Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those depart- 
ments of the Government whose duty it has been 
to minister to the wants of the army." Lord 
Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone vigorously opposed 
the motion ; but, says Mr. Smith, " the result 
of the division was one of the greatest surprises 
ever experienced in Parliamentary history. The 
numbers were — for Mr. Roebuck's committee, 
305 ; against, 148 — majority against Ministers, 
157. The scene was a peculiar and, probably, 
an unparalleled one. The cheers which are 
usually heard from one side or other of the House 
on the numbers of a division being announced 
were not forthcoming. The members were for 
the moment spellbound with astonishment ; then 
there came a murmur of amazement, and finally 
a burst of general laughter. " 

On the 1st of February Lord Aberdeen handed 
in his resignation ; and thus, amid the laughter 
of the House of Commons and the reproaches of 
popular indignation, collapsed the famous Coali- 
tion Ministry — sometimes known as the ** Admin- 
istration of all the Talents." 

Mr. Gladstone was one of the few members 
of the Aberdeen Cabmet who did not share the 



THE CRIMEAN WAR. 87 

blame for the mismanagement of which it had 
been convicted ; and, when on the resignation of 
Lord Aberdeen Lord Palmerston was directed by 
the Queen to form a ministry, he invited Mr. 
Gladstone to resume his place as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. He accepted, but, when a few weeks 
later, Mr. Roebuck gave notice of the appointment 
forthwith of his select committee and Lord Pal- 
merston accepted it, Mr. Gladstone once more 
retired from office ; and from this time until the 
conclusion of the Treaty of Paris in 1856 was one 
of the most eloquent and persistent advocates of 
peace. 

That which makes the Crimean War especially 
interesting in connection with Mr. Gladstone's 
personal history is that his conduct in that crisis 
has been made the basis of frequent attacks upon 
him for his conduct in a later and similar crisis — 
the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Why, it has been 
asked, should a statesman, who led his country 
into one war in behalf of Turkey and in defense of 
^' British interests,*' so fiercely assail a rival states- 
man who at a later period was making another 
gallant stand in behalf of the same ally and in 
defense of the same " British interests " ? 

Such a question, often repeated, renders it im- 
portant to define Mr. Gladstone's position. In the 
first place, as has been seen, it can not be truly 
said that Mr. Gladstone led his country into the 
Crimean War. On the contrary, like his chief, 



88 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Lord Aberdeen, he '* drifted" into the war while 
vigorously opposing it, and doing everything in 
his power to avert it. In the next place, Mr. 
Gladstone maintains that the two cases cited as 
identical are in fact totally different from each 
other. The doctrine of ^'British interests" — 
meaning the maintenance of the Porte, with all 
its crimes, in its "integrity and independence," 
as the proper bulwark of British sway in India — 
is essentially a recent invention, and was not the 
avowed doctrine of the British Government in the 
proceedings that led to the Crimean War. "Un- 
less," says Mr. Gladstone, "the Sovereign and her 
Consort, with their matchless opportunities of 
knowledge, were absolutely blindfolded, the policy 
which led us into that war was that of repressing 
an offense against the public law of Europe, but 
only by the united authority of the Powers of 
Europe." Again, speaking of the comparisons 
that have been drawn between the two periods, 
he says : 

" There was in each case an offender against the law 
and peace of Europe ; Turkey, by her distinct and obsti- 
nate breach of covenant, taking on the later occasion 
the place which Russia had held in the earlier contro- 
versy. There were in each case prolonged attempts to 
put down the offense by means of European concert. In 
1853-'4 these proceeded without a check until the eve of 
the war. In 1875-7 the combination was sadly inter- 
mittent ; but, in the singular and unprecedented confer- 



THE CRIMEAN WAR. 89 

ence at Constantinople, it was, at least on the part of 
the assembled representatives, perfectly unequivocal. In 
1854 the refusal of Prussia to support words by acts com- 
pletely altered the situation ; and in 1876-^7 the assurance 
conveyed to Turkey from England that only moral suasion 
was intended, had the same effect. The difference was 
that, in 1854-'5, two great Powers, with the partial sup- 
port of a third, prosecuted by military means the work 
they had undertaken ; in 1877 it was left to Russia alone 
to act as the hand and sword of Europe, with the natural 
consequence of weighting the scale with the question 
what compensation she might claim, or would claim, for 
her efforts and sacrifices." 

How closely similar are the sentiments recently 
expressed by Mr. Gladstone to those which he en- 
tertained at the earlier period is shown by a pas- 
sage in a speech which he made during the session 
of 1856 in a debate on the terms of the treaty of 
peace ! He said that he regarded the treaty as an 
honorable one, because the objects of the war had 
been attained. Eeferring to the statement that 
England had become bound, with the other 
Christian Powers of Europe, not only for the 
maintenance and integrity of the Turkish empire 
against foreign aggression, but also for the main- 
tenance of Turkey as a Mohammedan state, he 
said : 

"If I thought, sir, that this treaty of peace was an 
instrument which bound this country and our posterity, 
as well as our allies, to the maintenance of a set of in- 



90 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

stitutions in Turkey which you are endeavoring to re- 
form if you can, hut with respect to which endeavor 
few can he sanguine, I should not he content to fall hack 
upon the amendment of my nohle friend [Lord 0. Hamil- 
ton], expressing that I regarded the peace with satisfac- 
tion ; hut, on the contrary, I should look out for the most 
emphatic word in which to express my sense of condem- 
nation of a peace which bound us to maintain the lav 
and institutions of Turkey as a Mohammedan state." 



VIII. 

STUDIES IN HOMER. 

It is in the highest degree characteristic of 
Mr. Gladstone that he has employed such scant 
intervals of leisure as he could secure, amid his 
arduous and exacting labors as a man of affairs, 
in studies which other men would probably regard, 
not as recreation, but as constituting an occupa- 
tion in themselves. The study of Homer is com- 
monly considered to furnish the legitimate sub- 
ject for a life-work. "There is no other author," 
as Mr. Gladstone says, *^ whose case is analogous 
to this, or of whom it can be said that the study 
of him is not a mere matter of literary criticism, 
but is a full study of life in every one of its de- 
partments." 

For a man engaged as Mr. Gladstone has been 



STUDIES IN HOMER. 91 

in the most arduous and exacting public labors, 
it would have been creditable if he had merely 
acquired a reader's knowledge of so extensive a 
circle of studies ; but from his earliest youth the 
poems of Homer have been to him as a compan- 
ion, and no living Englishman — few living scholars 
anywhere — have made more valuable contribu- 
tions than he to the literature of Homerology. 
Wherever the study of Homer has its votaries 
and enthusiasts, the views of Mr. Gladstone upon 
the various questions involved in it are quoted 
and respected ; and in his own country no one 
has done so much as he to rescue the Homeric 
poems from the dull routine of the schools. 

During many years previously he had been ac- 
cumulating and sifting the materials for such a 
work ; but on his release from the cares of office 
in 1856 he turned to the subject with renewed 
ardor, and in 1858 appeared, in three large vol- 
umes, his "^^ Studies on Homer and the Homeric 
Age." *^ The purely technical parts of this 
work," says Mr. Smith, **are very elaborate in 
detail, but these are not the portions which most 
closely touch the general reader, who is unable 
to enter into the controversy upon the text of 
Homer, the catalogue, and the hundred other 
ramifications of the subject which are of pro- 
found interest to the student. But there are many 
passages in the work possessing a general value 
for the breadth of their speculation^ the lessons 



92 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

and conclusions they endeavor to enforce, the com- 
parisons instituted between ancient and modern 
genius, and for the admirable spirit and eloquence 
with which they are written. " 

In the beginning of his work Mr. Gladstone 
takes a general survey of the Homeric controversy, 
shows the place of Homer in classical education, 
develops the historic aims of Homer, discusses 
the probable trustworthiness of the text, and at- 
tempts to fix the place and authority of the poet 
in historical inquiry. He is a strenuous advocate 
of the unity of authorship both of the *' Iliad " and 
the '* Odyssey" ; and thinks that Homer was not 
only a native Greek, but that he lived within a 
generation or two of the Trojan War, and prob- 
ably sang his songs to the children and grand- 
children of the heroes who participated in the 
great conflict. In regard to the text of the poems, 
while conceding that there are portions which 
have obviously been interpolated or altered, he 
yet bases the whole structure of his criticism and 
theories upon the substantial general correctness 
of the text. 

Concerning the highly important question as 
to the place and authority of Homer in historical 
inquiry, Mr. Gladstone says : "In regard to the 
religion, history, ethnology, polity, and life at 
large of the Greeks of the heroic times, the au- 
thority of the Homeric poems, standing far above 
that of the whole mass of the later literary tra- 



STUDIES IN HOMER. 93 

ditions in any of their forms, ought never to be 
treated as homogeneous with them, but should 
usually, in the first instance, be handled by it- 
self, and the testimony of later writers should, 
in general, be handled in subordination to it, 
and should be tried by it, as by a touchstone, 
on all the subjects which it embraces. Homer 
is not only older by some generations than 
Hesiod, and by many centuries than ^schylus 
and the other great Greek writers, but enjoys a 
superiority in another important respect, viz., 
that no age since his own has produced a more 
acute, accurate, and comprehensive observer. 
Judging from internal evidence, he alone stood 
within the precincts of the heroic time, and was 
imbued from head to foot with its spirit and its 
associations." 

After dealing with these preliminary questions, 
the author proceeds to discuss the ethnology of 
the Greek races ; the mythology of the Homeric 
age, and the supernatural system or theo-mythol- 
ogy of Homer ; the origin of the Olympian re- 
ligion ; the morals or ethics of the Homeric age ; 
woman in the heroic age ; and the office of the 
Homeric poems in relation to that of the early 
books of the Bible. Then come sections upon the 
Politics of the Homeric age ; upon Trojans and 
Greeks ; upon the Geography of the poems ; and 
upon "Some Points of the Poetry of Homer." 
This last division is particularly interesting, for in 



94 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

it are discussed the plot of the '^ Iliad " ; the sense 
of beauty in Homer, human, animal, and inani- 
mate ; Homer's perception and use of number ; 
Homer's perception and use of color ; Homer and 
some of his successors in epic poetry, particularly 
Virgil and Tasso ; some principal Homeric char- 
acters in Troy — Hector, Helen, and Paris ; and 
the decadence of the great Homeric characters 
in the later tradition. *' The section in which 
comparisons are instituted between Homer and 
Milton, Dante, Virgil, and Tasso, is distinguished 
for its broad and profound criticism, though some 
of the judgments expressed will probably be found 
to clash with those formed by readers who have 
their indiyidual favorites among the epic poets." 

Mr. Smith justly characterizes the work, in its 
elaborate detail, as "a colossal monument of the 
author's patience and Homeric knowledge. " "Sel- 
dom is it," he continues, '^ that so great an under- 
taking is successfully executed by one engaged in 
the business and turmoil of political life. But 
we perceive in the author's enthusiasm and deep 
love of his subject the incentives which alone 
rendered such a work possible under these circum- 
stances. In the concluding words of the last 
volume Mr. Gladstone himself touches upon the 
pleasing and engrossing nature of his task. He 
observes that to pass from the study of Homer to 
the ordinary business of the world is to step out 
of a palace of enchantments into the cold gray 



STUDIES IN HOMER 95 

light of a polar day. * But the spells,' he adds, 
* in which this sorcerer deals have no affinity with 
that drug from Egypt which drowns the spirit in 
effeminate indifference : rather they are like the 
(pdpnaKov koBXov, the remedial specific, which, 
freshening the understanding by contact with the 
truth and strength of nature, should both im- 
prove its vigilance against deceit and danger, and 
increase its vigor and resolution for the discharge 
of duty.'" 

A much greater critic, Mr. Edward A. Free- 
man, describes *Hhese noble volumes" as a work 
which would be a worthy fruit of a life spent in 
learned retirement, and adds : "As the work of 
one of our first orators and statesmen, they are 
altogether wonderful. Not, indeed, that Mr. 
Gladstone's two characters of scholar and states- 
man have done aught but help and strengthen one 
another. His long experience of the world has 
taught him the better to appreciate Homer's won- 
derful knowledge of human nature ; the practical 
aspect of his poems, the deep moral and political 
lessons which they teach, become a far more true 
and living thing to the man of busy life than 
they can ever be to the mere solitary student. 
And, perhaps, his familiarity with the purest and 
most ennobling source of inspiration may have had 
some effect in adorning Mr. Gladstone's political 
oratory with more than one of its noblest feat- 
ures. . . . What strikes one more than anything 



96 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

else throughout Mr. Gladstone's volumes is the in- 
tense earnestness, the loftiness of moral purpose, 
which breathes in every page. He has not taken 
up Homer as a plaything, nor even as a mere 
literary enjoyment. To him the study of the 
prince of poets is clearly a means by which him- 
self and other men may be made wiser and better." 
He points out that the work is not without de- 
fects, but concedes that, in spite of these, the 
volumes are ^' worthy alike of their author and of 
their subject, the freshest and most genial tribute 
to ancient literature which has been paid even by 
an age rich in such offerings." In them, Mr. 
Gladstone has " done such justice to Homer and 
his age as Homer has never received out of his 
own land. He has vindicated the true position 
of the greatest of poets ; he has cleared his tale 
and its actors from the misrepresentations of 
ages." 

This elaborate work upon Homer Mr. Glad- 
stone has followed up with kindred writings at 
various periods. In 1869 appeared *'Juventus 
Mundi ; Gods and Men of the Heroic Age in 
Greece," in which the author states that he has 
endeavored to embody the greater part of the 
results which he had reached in the previous 
" Studies." This latter work is of a more popu- 
lar character than its predecessor, and also con- 
tains some modifications of views at which the 
author had arrived during the intervening period 



STUDIES IN HOMER. 97 

of ten years. A still furtlier popularization of 
his studies is to be found in the excellent and in- 
teresting " Primer of Homer," which he con- 
tributed, in 1879, to Mr. J. R. Green's series of 
** Literature Primers." 

In 1876 appeared ^^ Homeric Synchronism : 
An Inquiry into the Time and Place of Homer," 
a work written in the belief that " the time had 
at length come for serious effort to connect the 
poems of Homer, by means of the internal evi- 
dence which they supply, with events and person- 
ages which are now known from other sources to 
belong to periods, already approximately defined, 
of the primeval history of the human race" — 
namely, with portions of the series of Egjrptian 
dynasties. These are Mr. Gladstone's principal 
contributions to Homerology ; but, besides these, 
he has written various articles for the magazines 
and reviews, and has touched upon the subject in 
several public addresses. 

" We now part from these Homeric studies, 
into which Mr. Gladstone has thrown so much 
perception, learning, and research. The Siege of 
Troy and the Wanderings of Ulysses possess an 
undying charm, whether their chief incidents be 
wholly fictitious, partially fictitious, or veritable 
history ; and no nobler study could well engage 
the leisure of a man of culture. It is worthy of 
note, in conclusion, that, after all his just and 
lofty encomiums upon the Homeric records, Mr. 
7 



98 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTOXE. 

Gladstone deduces from them the great abiding 
lesson, that they do but ' show us the total inability 
of our race, even when at its maximum of power, 
to solve for ourselves the problem of our destiny ; 
to extract for ourselves the sting from care, from 
sorrow, and, above all, from death ; or even to 
retain without waste the knowledge of God, where 
we have become separate from the source which 
imparts it. * " 



IX. 

TJS A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 

One incident of the period during which 
Mr. Gladstone was absent from the Government 
benches is worthy of mention. In 1858 he ac- 
cepted from the Earl of Derby the appointment 
of Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary to the 
Ionian Islands, and in that capacity went out to 
Corfu. The Ionian Islands were under the pro- 
tection of England, and, difficulties having arisen, 
owing to the desire of the inhabitants to sever the 
connection with England and unite themselves 
with the kingdom of Greece, Mr. Gladstone was 
dispatched on a commission of inquiry. He does 
not appear to have accomplished much beyond 
reporting to the Government at home that '*the 
single and unanimous will of the Ionian people 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 99 

has been and is for their union with the kingdom 
of Greece"; and in February, 1859, he returned 
home, having been succeeded by a regularly ap- 
pointed lord high commissioner. It will be 
remembered that the hope of the Islanders was 
postponed until 1864, when they were formally 
handed over to Greece. 

After his retirement from Lord Palmerston's 
Ministry, Mr. Gladstone occupied the position of an 
independent member in the House of Commons, 
sometimes opposing and sometimes supporting 
the measures both of Lord Palmerston and of the 
Administration of the Earl of Derby, which suc- 
ceeded to power in 1858. Early in the year 1859 
an unexpected revolution of the political wheel 
brought him again into office. '*The desire for 
Parliamentary Reform," says Mr. Molesworth, 
*' had never ceased to exist ; but the agitation of 
the question had been to a great extent suspended 
during the years that had passed between the col- 
lapse of Chartism in 1848 and the period we have 
now reached. The attention of the legislature 
and the country had been engrossed by the Great 
Exhibition, by the Crimean, Chinese, Persian, and 
Indian wars, and by other events of less impor- 
tance. The consequence was that the considera- 
tion of this question had, with general consent, 
been postponed to a more convenient season. 
Now, however, the state of parties favored the 
revival of its agitation ; and toward the close of 

LOFC 



100 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

1858 several large and important meetings were 
held for the purpose of manifesting the feeling. 
... It is true that the feeling exhibited in favor 
of it was far inferior in intensity to that which 
had prevailed in 1831 and 1832. For this there 
were many reasons. The abuses of our represent- 
ative system were not nearly so glaring as those 
which existed before the passage of the first Ee- 
form bill ; the influence of public opinion was 
much more powerful than it had been ; class 
legislation was on the wane ; the number of those 
who constituted the electoral body was proportion- 
ately much larger, the number of those excluded 
from it was proportionately much smaller ; the 
condition of the country was very different, for, 
instead of the suffering that prevailed in 1831, 
and affected almost every class and description of 
persons, there was in 1858 general prosperity and 
contentment. All these circumstances tended to 
abate the eagerness with which a reform of our 
electoral system was demanded. Nevertheless, a 
strong feeling in favor of such a reform existed at 
this time, and its existence is proved by the fact 
that not only Lord John Eussell and Lord Pal- 
merston were prepared to deal with the question, 
but that even Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, know- 
ing as they did the perils they would have to en- 
counter not only from their political opponents, 
but also, and perhaps even more formidably, from 
the more extreme section of their political sup- 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 101 

porters, felt that the only course open to them 
was that of boldly braving these dangers, and 
staking the existence of their government on the 
success of a measure for the reform of Parlia- 
ment. Their intention to do this, though not 
known, was suspected ; and it was generally be- 
lieved at the end of this year that a measure of 
Parliamentary Reform would be announced in the 
Queen's speech, and introduced at an early period 
of the approaching session. Both parties were 
therefore looking forward, not, indeed, with 
strongly excited feelings such as the question had 
formerly raised, but still with a certain anxious 
and feverish curiosity, for the introduction of the 
bill which the Cabinet of Lord Derby was under- 
stood to be engaged in framing, and to the strug- 
gle for which it would be sure to be the signal in 
the next Parliamentary session." 

The expected measure was introduced early in 
the session of 1859, and at once aroused a storm 
of opposition. Two of the more conservative 
members of the Cabinet seceded rather than sup- 
port it, yet it was by no means thorough-going 
enough to satisfy the demands of the reformers. 
Mr. Gladstone gave the measure a modified sup- 
port, on the ground that it was at least a step in 
advance, but after a long discussion the Govern- 
ment was defeated by a substantial majority in an 
exceedingly full House. Thereupon Lord Derby 
dissolved Parliament and appealed to the country, 



102 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

but, the verdict of the constituencies being ad- 
verse, he handed in his resignation, and Lord Pal- 
merston was invited to form a ministry. In this 
Ministry, which lasted as long as the Premier's 
life, Mr. Gladstone again filled the office of Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. 

** During the long reign of Lord Palmerston," 
says Mr. Lucy, "the progress of politics attuned 
itself to the beat of the pulse of the aged Premier. 
There were wars abroad, but peace and prosperity 
at home, and Mr. Gladstone was able to carry out 
the scheme of bold but far-seeing finance which 
the Crimean War had interrupted five years ear- 
lier. The year 1860 was the year which saw the 
completion of the commercial treaty with France ; 
a fruitful tree, which Mr. Cobden and Napoleon 
III planted, and which Mr. Gladstone watered. 
This same year was the last of the paper duty, 
the abolition of which was a final stroke in that 
labor for the freedom of the press and the exten- 
sion of intelligence, begun when, in his first bud- 
get, he had made an end of the stamp duty." 

The budget of 1860 is usually regarded as Mr. 
Gladstone's greatest achievement in finance, and 
the speech in which he explained it, occupymg 
four hours in the delivery, aroused as much in- 
terest as any that had preceded it. One who 
heard it says: *^It was admirably arranged for 
the purpose of awaking and keeping attention, 
piquing and teasing curiosity, and sustaining de- 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 103 

sire to hear from the first sentence to the last. 
It was not a speech ; it was an oration in the form 
of a great state paper made eloquent, in which 
there was a proper restraint over the crowding 
ideas, the most exact accuracy in the sentences, 
and even in the very words chosen ; the most per- 
fect balancing of parts, and, more than all, there 
were no errors of omission ; nothing was put 
wrongly and nothing was overlooked." With a 
House crowded in every corner, with the strain 
upon his own mental faculties, and the great 
physical tax implied in the management of the 
voice and the necessity for remaining upon his 
feet during this long period, " the observed of all 
observers," Mr. Gladstone took all as quietly, we 
are told, as if he had just risen to address a few 
observations to Mr. Speaker. Indeed, it was 
laughingly said that he could address a House 
for a whole week, and on Friday evening take a 
new departure, beginning with the observation, 
"After these preliminary remarks, I will now 
proceed to deal with the subject matter of my 
financial plan." 

In the course of the session of 1860 Lord John 
Russell introduced a new Reform bill, which was 
vigorously advocated by Mr. Gladstone, but, after 
being read a second time without a division. Lord 
John withdrew it, because he saw that it was im- 
possible to carry it through both Houses during 
the session. 



104 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Turnmg aside for a moment from the arena of 
politics, we may contemplate Mr. Gladstone in a 
different capacity, and one in which he has made 
several appearances during his lengthened career. 
On the 16th of April, 1860, he was installed as 
Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, re- 
ceiving previous to the installation the degree of 
LL.D. In the address which he delivered on this 
occasion — a most valuable and eloquent one — he 
eulogized the work of the University as a great 
organ of preparation for after-life, described the 
part which it had played in the history of civili- 
zation, discussed the question as to the proper 
work of universities, and urged upon the students 
the study of ancient literature as affording the 
most effective intellectual training. 

A few months after the delivery of this ad- 
dress our own Civil War broke out, and Mr. 
Gladstone's attitude in regard to this constitutes 
what is in the eyes of Americans the most vulner- 
able incident of his career as a statesman. Toward 
the close of 1862 he delivered a speech at New- 
castle, in which he expressed his conviction that 
Jefferson Davis had already succeeded in making 
the Southern States of America, which were in 
revolt, an independent nation. Only a few weeks 
before Mr. Gladstone thus expressed himself. 
Earl Russell had written as follows to Mr. Mason, 
in reply to his claim to have the Confederate 
States recognized as a separate and independent 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 105 

power : ^^ In order to be entitled to a place among 
the independent nations of the earth, a State 
ought not only to have strength and resources 
for a time, but afford promise of stability and 
permanence. Should the Confederate States of 
America win that place among nations, it might 
be right for other nations justly to acknowledge 
an independence achieved by victory, and main- 
tained by a successful resistance to all attempts 
to overthrow it. That time, however, has not, 
in the judgment of her Majesty's Government, 
arrived. Her Majesty's Government, therefore, 
can only hope that a peaceful termination of the 
present bloody and destructive contest may not 
be far distant." This was undoubtedly the 
sentiment entertained by the great majority of 
reflecting Englishmen ; and such an opinion as 
Mr. Gladstone's, coming from the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, caused a great sensation, and 
pained many of his warmest political supporters, 
who were strongly on the side of the North in a 
struggle which they regarded as virtually turning 
upon the slavery question. Looking at the 
matter quite apart from all feeling for or against 
the North or the South, and remembering Mr. 
Gladstone's position in a government the policy 
of which was one of neutrality, it must be con- 
fessed that his utterance was highly indiscreet. 
Subsequently, being interrogated on the subject 
on behalf of the cotton shippers, he said that his 



106 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

words were no more than the expression, in rather 
more pointed terms, of an opinion which he had 
long ago stated in public, that the effort of the 
Northern States to subdue the Southern ones was 
hopeless, by reason of the resistance of the latter. 
But, if the judgment thus expressed was pre- 
mature and mistaken, Mr. Gladstone has since 
made such atonement as was possible by the 
frankest possible apology and retraction. Writ- 
ing in August, 1867, to a New York correspondent, 
Mr. C. Edwards Lester, he said : '^ I must confess 
that I was wrong ; that I took too much upon 
myself in expressing such an opinion. Yet the 
motive was not bad. My sympathies were then 
— where they had long before been, where they 
are now — with the whole American people. I, 
probably, like many Europeans, did not under- 
stand the nature and working of the American 
Union. I had imbibed conscientiously, if er- 
roneously, an opinion that twenty or twenty-four 
millions of the North would be happier and would 
be stronger (of course, assuming that they would 
hold together) without the South than with it, 
and also that the negroes would be much nearer 
to emancipation under a Southern Government 
than under the old system of the Union, which 
had not at that date (August, 1862) been aban- 
doned, and which always appeared to me to place 
the whole power of the North at the command of 
the slaveholding interests of the South. As far 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 107 

as regards the special or separate interest of Eng- 
land in the matter, I, differing from many others, 
had always contended that it was best for our 
interest that the Union should be kept entire." 

Moreover, as Mr. T. W. Higginson has truly 
observed, Mr. Gladstone's error was the error of 
educated England in general ; and from the mo- 
ment it was retracted America has had in the 
English Government no manlier friend. Through 
all the subsequent controversy over the Alabama 
claims, he was uniformly just and even friendly 
toward the United States, and this in the face of 
the bitterest opposition from the other party. 

During the session of 1863 Mr. Gladstone 
spoke in favor of a measure which has only be- 
come law within the past few months, and which 
was interesting then chiefly as showing the advance 
which he was making in religious toleration. Sir 
Morton Peto introduced a Dissenters' Burials bill, 
the object of which was to enable Nonconform- 
ists to have their funerals celebrated with their 
own religious rites and services, and by their own 
ministers, in the graveyards of the Established 
Church. The bill was strongly opposed on its 
second reading by Lord Robert Cecil (now the 
Marquis of Salisbury), Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. 
Gathorne Hardy. Mr. Gladstone said that he 
could not refuse his assent to the measure, though 
some portions of it were open to objection. " But," 
he continued, '*I do not see that there is sufficient 



108 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

reason, or indeed any reason at all, why, after hav- 
ing granted, and most properly granted, to the 
entire community the power of professing and 
practicing what form of religion they please dur- 
ing life, you should say to themselves or their 
relatives when dead : * We will at the last lay our 
hands upon you, and not permit you to enjoy the 
privilege of being buried in the churchyard, 
where, perhaps, the ashes of your ancestors re- 
pose, or, at any rate, in the place of which you 
are parishioners, unless you appear there as mem- 
bers of the Church of England, and as members 
of that Church have her service read over your 
remains.' That appears to me an inconsistency 
and an anomaly in the present state of the law, 
and is in the nature of a grievance." The bill 
was rejected by 221 to 96. 

Another speech, which exhibited still more 
strikingly Mr. Gladstone's increasing liberality of 
sentiment, was delivered during the session of 1865 
in connection with the Irish Church. Mr. Dill- 
wyn having proposed a motion, '^ That the present 
position of the Irish Church Establishment is un- 
satisfactory, and calls for the early attention of 
her Majesty's Government," Mr. Gladstone rose 
and said that, although the Government were un- 
able to agree to the resolution, they were not pre- 
pared to deny the abstract truth of the former 
part of it. They could not assert that the pres- 
ent position of the Establishment was satisfactory. 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. 109 

At the close of a lengthy speech, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer said that he could come to no 
other conclusion than that the Irish Church, as 
she then stood, was in a false position. It was 
much more difficult, however, to decide upon the 
practical aspect of the question, and no one had 
ventured to propose the remedy required for the 
existing state of things. This question raised a 
whole nest of political problems ; for, while the 
vast majority of the Irish people were opposed to 
the maintenance of large and liberal endowments 
for a fragment of the population, they repudiated 
any desire to appropriate these endowments, and 
firmly rejected all idea of receiving a state pro- 
vision for themselves. How could the Govern- 
ment, in view of these facts, substitute a satisfac- 
tory for an admittedly unsatisfactory state of 
things ? They were unable to do so. Conse- 
quently, *^we feel that we ought to decline to 
follow the honorable gentleman into the lobby, and 
declare that it is the duty of the Government to 
give their early attention to the subject ; because, 
if we gave a vote to that eifect, we should be com- 
mitting one of the gravest offenses of which a 
Government could be guilty — namely, giving a 
deliberate and solemn promise to the country, 
which promise it would be out of our power to 
fulfill." The debate was adjourned, but was not 
resumed during the session. 

This question, however, was rapidly pressing 



110 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

forward for settlement — how rapidly Mr. Gladstone 
himself seemed not to be aware of at the time. 
Yet the act of Disestablishment was to proceed 
from his own hand within a very brief period. 

The gradual but steady growth in ecclesiastical 
and political liberty revealed by these and other 
speeches was creating a breach between Mr. Glad- 
stone and his constituents, which showed itself in 
1865, when Parliament was dissolved preparatory 
to a general election. Offering himself for reelec- 
tion at Oxford, he was rejected, after a spirited 
contest, in favor of Mr. Gathorne Hardy, now 
Lord Cranbrook, a bigoted and uncompromising 
Conservative, who was not likely to forfeit the 
confidence of his supporters by any eccentricities 
of genius. 

This event caused a profound sensation, and 
the " Times " expressed the general sentiment of 
the educated public in saying : " The enemies of 
the University will make the most of her disgrace. 
It has hitherto been supposed that a learned con- 
stituency was to some extent exempt from the 
vulgar motives of party spirit, and capable of 
forming a higher estimate of statesmanship thai? 
common tradesmen or tenant-farmers. It will 
now stand on record that they have deliberately 
sacrificed a representative who combined the very 
highest qualifications, moral and intellectual, for 
an academical seat, to party spirit, and party 
spirit alone. Mr. Gladstone's brilliant public 



IN A LIBERAL MINISTRY. lU 

career, his great academical, distinctions and liter- 
ary attainments, his very subtlety and sympathy 
with ideas for their own sake, mark him out be- 
yond all living men for such a position. However 
progressive in purely secular politics, he has ever 
shown himself a staunch and devoted Churchman 
wherever Church doctrine or ecclesiastical rights 
were concerned. . . . Henceforth, Mr. Gladstone 
will belong to the country, but no longer to the 
University. Those Oxford influences and tradi- 
tions which have so deeply colored his views, and 
so greatly interfered with his better judgment, 
must gradually lose their hold on him." A yet 
more emphatic condemnation came from the 
*' Daily News," the organ of advanced Liberal 
opinion : "Mr. Gladstone's career as a statesman 
will certainly not be arrested, nor Mr. Gathorne 
Hardy's capacity be enlarged by the number of 
votes which Tory squires or Tory parsons may in- 
flict upon Lord Derby's cheerful and fluent sub- 
altern, or withhold from Lord Palmerston's bril- 
liant colleague. The late Sir Robert Peel was 
but the chief of a party until, admonished by one 
ostracism, he became finally emancipated by ano- 
ther. Then, as now, the statesman who was 
destined to give up to mankind what was never 
meant for the barren service of a party, could say 
to the honest bigots who rejected him — 

' I banish you : 
There is a world elsewhere.' 



112 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Mediocrity will not be turned into genius, honest 
and good-natured insignificance into force, fluency 
into eloquence, if the resident and non-resident 
Toryism of the University of Oxford should pre- 
fer the safe and sound Mr. Hardy to the illustrious 
Minister whom all Europe envies us, whose name 
is a household word in every political assembly in 
the world." 

England, in one geographical section or another 
of it, has always taken care that it shall not be de- 
prived of the advantage of Mr. Gladstone's presence 
in its Parliament. ^*0n this occasion," says Mr. 
Lucy, ^Mt was South Lancashire which, perceiv- 
ing his peril at Oxford, voluntarily offered to 
secure him a seat. From the University he hast- 
ened to the manufacturing town, and stood before 
the men of Manchester, as he said, ' unmuzzled.' 
Even the dullest politicians recognized the signif- 
icance of the events so aptly described in this 
memorable phrase. As long as Mr. Gladstone 
was politically associated with Oxford, the Alma 
Mater which he loved with changeless affection, 
there was a possibility that he might successfully 
resist the silent forces that were leading him to a 
more uncompromising Liberalism. When Oxford 
snapped the chain, he was free to go whither he 
listed. The end would, doubtless, have arrived 
sooner or later, and he would have retired from 
Oxford because he was bent upon freeing the Irish 
Church, just as in an earlier stage of his career he 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'6'7. 113 

iiad retired from Newark because he was about to 
join in an assault on Protection. Sooner or later 
the unmuzzling must have been accomplished. 
Oxford elected to make it sooner by several years." 



X. 

THE EEFORM BILLS OF 1866-67. 

The character of Lord Palmerston was a sort 
of pledge that the question of Parliamentary Re- 
form would remain **hung up " during his tenure 
of office ; and, in fact, only once during his ad- 
ministration was any step attempted to be taken 
in that direction. At length, in the autumn of 
1865, Lord Palmerston died, and "the pent-up 
flood of Liberal life rushed down like a cataract. " 
Earl Russell, the Nestor of Reform, succeeded to 
the vacant Premiership, and Mr. Gladstone, of 
course retaining his ministerial position as Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, became Leader of the 
House of Commons. 

Of the way in which Mr. Gladstone fulfilled 
the duties of his new position, Mr. Molesworth 
gives us a glimpse : " Amidst all the manifold 
questions which engaged the attention of Parlia- 
ment during this session, Mr. Gladstone's quality 
as leader of the House was fully tried. Like Lord 

8 



114 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Palmerston, he generally remained in the House 
from the commencement of the sittings to the 
close of them, however late the hour of adjourn- 
ment might be. But he did not, like him, 
slumber during the greater part of the sittings ; 
on the contrary, he listened attentively to every 
speaker, answered fully every question put to him, 
spoke on every subject, and exhibited a sensitive 
and conscientious anxiety to discharge his func- 
tions as leader of the House, which his friends 
feared would soon disable him from the perform- 
ance of the responsible duties which belonged to 
him, and with his fall precipitate that of the 
Government, of which he was the mainstay." 

At the opening of the session of 1866 the 
Queen's speech intimated that the question of 
Parliamentary Reform would receive immediate 
attention, and in redemption of this promise a 
new Franchise bill was introduced on March 13th. 
Discussing the circumstances of this event, Mr. 
Molesworth says: ^'If the Ministry had looked 
merely to its own stability, or to its chances of 
retention of office, it would not have introduced 
a Reform bill during the first session of a newly 
elected Parliament, the members of which were 
still smarting under the recollection of the con- 
tests in which they had been engaged, the dangers 
they had run, the expenses they had already in- 
curred, and the demands on their purses they had 
still to meet, and who might, therefore, be ex- 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 115 

pected to regard with little favor a measure the 
effect of which would be speedily to send them 
back to their constituents, and compel them again 
to run the risks and incur the expenses that were 
so fresh in their remembrance. There can be no 
doubt that this was the chief cause of the dis- 
favor with which the proposition of the Govern- 
ment was regarded by many of those who num- 
bered themselves among the supporters of the 
Administration, and that, if Earl Russell and Mr. 
Gladstone had waited another session or two be- 
fore introducing their bill, it would have met with 
a much more favorable reception, and probably 
have been carried through without much change 
or difficulty. Nor were there wanting among 
their colleagues men who, having been introduced 
into the Cabinet by Lord Palmerston, and sharing 
his feelings with regard to the question of Reform, 
acknowledged, with regret, that it was a question 
the settlement of which could not be much 
longer delayed, but wished that it should not be 
prematurely pressed. There can be no doubt 
that under ordinary circumstances Lord Russell 
and Mr. Gladstone would have yielded to consid- 
erations based on such strong reasons of expedi- 
ency. But they felt, and justly felt, that the 
question had already been hung up too long ; that 
the delay which had occurred with regard to it 
was damaging to our institutions and to the char- 
acter of our public men ; and, therefore, that it 



116 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

was not the time to listen to mere considerations 
of prudence or expediency, but to show the 
country that there were public men who valued 
consistency more than place, and were determined, 
come of it what might, to redeem their pledges 
in reference to this great and long - delayed 
question." 

Upon Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the House 
of Commons, fell the task of introducing the bill, 
and bearing the brunt of the battle which raged 
around it. The bill was in reality a very moder- 
ate one, and bore unmistakably upon its face the 
proof that it was the result of a compromise 
within the Cabinet ; but by the more fanatical 
Conservatives it was regarded as a dangerous step 
in the direction of democracy. Mr. Disraeli led 
the united Conservative party in an attack upon 
it of unprecedented fierceness and obstinacy ; but 
the most effective opposition to the measure came 
from within the ranks of the Liberal party itself. 
Mr. Lowe, fresh from the insufficient glories of a 
colonial legislature, assailed Mr. Gladstone in a se- 
ries of speeches which established his reputation 
and raised him to the first rank of Parliamentary 
debaters. Another prominent Liberal who proved 
recreant was Mr. Horsman, who described Mr. 
Gladstone's opening speech as '^another bid for 
power, another promise made to be broken, anoth- 
er political fraud and Parliamentary juggle. " This 
diatribe drew from Mr. Bright a crushing and mem- 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 117 

orable retort. Mr. Horsman, he said, had " re- 
tired into what may be called his political Cave of 
Adullam, to which he invited every one who was 
in distress, and every one who was discontented. 
He has long been anxious to found a party in this 
House ; and there is scarcely a member at this 
end of the House who is able to address us with 
effect, or to take much part, whom he has not 
tried to bring over to his party and his cabal. At 
last he has succeeded in hooking the right honor- 
able gentleman the member for Calne, Mr. Lowe. 
I know it was the opinion many years ago of a 
member of the Cabinet that two men could make 
a party. When a party is formed of two men so 
amiable and so disinterested as the two right lion- 
orable gentlemen, we may hope to see for the first 
time in Parliament a party perfectly harmonious 
and distinguished by mutual and unbroken trust. 
But there is one difficulty which it is impossible 
to remove. This party of two is like the Scotch 
terrier that was so covered with hair that you 
could not tell which was the head and which was 
the tail." This sally, which excited immoderate 
laughter at the time, remains one of the happiest 
examples of Parliamentary retort and hadmage. 

Mr. Disraeli, in a speech of great bitterness, 
reproached Mr. Gladstone for his changes of 
opinion, and accused him of '^Americanizing our 
institutions." But the most striking of all the 
incidents of this celebrated debate was the closings 



118 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

speech of Mr. Gladstone — a speech which is con- 
ceded to have been one of the most eloquent that 
has been heard in Parliament since the great days 
of Pitt and Fox. Rising at one o'clock in the 
morning to conclude a legislative battle which 
had begun a fortnight before, he proceeded to re- 
but the charges which had been made against the 
bill. *^ At last," he said, alluding to a statement 
by Mr. Disraeli, ^* we have obtained a declaration 
from an authoritative source that a bill which, in 
a country with five millions of adult males, pro- 
poses to add to a limited constituency 200,000 of 
the middle class and 200,000 of the working 
class, is, in the judgment of the leader of the 
Tory party, a bill to reconstruct the Constitu- 
tion upon American principles." Another point 
upon which Mr. Disraeli had assailed him was 
dealt with in the following famous and impressive 
passage : 

" The right honorable gentleman, secure in the rec- 
ollection of his own consistency, has taunted me with 
the errors of my boyhood. When he addressed the 
honorable member for Westminster, he showed his mag- 
nanimity by declaring that he would not take the phi- 
losopher to task for what he wrote twenty-five years ago; 
but when he caught one who, thirty-six years ago just 
emerged from boyhood, and still an undergraduate at Ox- 
ford, had expressed an opinion adverse to the Reform 
bill of 1832, of which he had so long and bitterly re- 
pented, then the right honorable gentleman could not 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 119 

resist the temptation. He, a Parliamentary leader of 
twenty years' standing, is so ignorant of the House of 
Commons that he positively thought he got a Parlia- 
mentary advantage by exhibiting me as an opponent of 
the Reform bill of 1832. As the right honorable gentle- 
man has exhibited me, let me exhibit myself. It is true, 
I deeply regret it, but I was bred under the shadow of 
the great name of Canning ; every influence connected 
with that name governed the politics of ray childhood and 
of my youth; with Canning I rejoiced in the removal of 
religious disabilities, and in the character which he gave 
to our policy abroad ; with Canning I rejoiced in the 
opening which he made toward the establishment of free 
commercial interchanges between nations ; with Canning, 
and under the shadow of that great name, and under 
the shadow of the yet more venerable name of Burke, I 
grant my youthful mind and imagination were impressed 
just the same as the mature mind of the right honorable 
gentleman is now impressed. I had conceived that fear 
and alarm of the first Reform bill in the days of my 
undergraduate career at Oxford which the right honor- 
able gentleman now feels ; and the only difference be- 
tween us is this — I thank him for bringing it out — that, 
having those views, I moved the Oxford Union Debating 
Society to express them clearly, plainly, forcibly, in down- 
right English, and that the right honorable gentleman is 
still obliged to skulk under the cover of the amendment 
of the noble lord. I envy him not one particle of the 
polemical advantage which he has gained by his discreet 
reference to the proceedings of the Oxford Union Debat- 
ing Society in the year of grace 1831. My position, sir, 
in regard to the Liberal party is in all points the oppo- 
site of Earl Russell's. , . . I have none of the claims he 



(20 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

possesses. I came among you an outcast from those 
with whom I associated, driven from them, I admit, hy 
no arbitrary act, but by the slow and resistless forces of 
conviction. I came among you, to make use of the legal 
phraseology^ in forma pauperis. I had nothing to offer 
you but faithful and honorable service. You received 
me as Dido received the shipwrecked JEneas — 

' Ejectura littore, egentem 
Accepi,' 

and I only trust you may not hereafter at any time 
have to complete the sentence in regard to me — 

' Et regni demens, in parte locavi.' 

You received me with kindness, indulgence, generosity, 
and I may even say with some measure of confidence. 
And the relation between us has assumed such a form 
that you can never be my debtors, but that I must for 
ever be in your debt. It is not from me, under such cir- 
cumstances, that any word will proceed that can savor 
of the character which the right honorable gentleman 
imputes to the conduct of the Government with respect 
to the present bill." 

An old and highly esteemed member of the 
Liberal party (Mr. Philips, member for Bury) has 
told us that the delivery of this passage brought 
tears into his eyes ; and he added, " I was not 
ashamed to own it, when I observed that several 
friends near me were similarly moved." 

But the finest passage in the speech — perhaps 
the finest in all Mr. Gladstone's speeches — was the 
peroration : 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 121 

" Sir, we are assailed ; this bill is in a state of crisis 
and of peril, and the Government along with it. We 
stand or fall with it, as has been declared by my noble 
friend Lord Russell. We stand with it now ; we may 
fall with it a short time hence. If we do so fall, we, or 
others in our places, shall rise with it hereafter. I shall 
not attempt to measure with precision the forces that 
are to be arrayed against us in the coming issue. Per- 
haps the great division of to-night is not to be the last, 
but only the first of a series of divisions. At some 
point of the contest you may possibly succeed. You 
may drive us from our seats. You may slay, you may 
bury, the measure that we have introduced. But we 
will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, 
with certain confidence in its fulfillment : 

* Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.' 

You can not fight against the future. Time is on our 
side. The great social forces which move onward in 
their might and majesty, and which the tumult of these 
debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those 
great social forces are against you ; they work with us ; 
they are marshaled in our support. And the banner 
which we now carry in the fight, though, perhaps, at 
some moment of the struggle it may droop over our 
sinking heads, yet will float again in the eye of heaven, 
and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people 
of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a 
certain and to a not distant victory." 

The immediately following division took place 
amid scenes of the greatest excitement. ^' The 
Speaker having put the question, members with- 



122 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

drew. After voting, the * Ayes ' and the * Noes ' 
gradually found their way to the seats on the floor 
and in the galleries. A spectator, describing the 
memorable scene, says that in about twenty min- 
utes a strange, electric-like agitation began to 
manifest itself. Mr. Walpole whispered to Mr. 
Disraeli the word *Six.' Shortly afterward Mr. 
Brand appeared, and it was known that the 
strength of the Opposition was larger than the 
Liberals had feared or the Tories had hoped. Mr. 
Childers rushed up the floor to the Treasury bench, 
and, in a tone of disappointment, uttered the 
word * Five ' to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Adam, the 
Government teller, now emerged upon the scene. 
The House was charged with electricity like a 
vast thunder-cloud ; and now the spark was about 
to be applied. Strangers rose in their seats, the 
crowd at the bar pushed half way up the House, 
the Royal Princes leaned forward in their standing- 
places, and all was confusion. The tellers walked 
up the floor and made due obeisance to the chair. 
Then, loudly and distinctly, Mr. Brand read out 
the numbers as follows : Ayes to the right, 318 ; 
Noes to the left, 313. The majority for the Gov- 
ernment was accordingly five." What followed 
is best described in the language of the spectator 
just mentioned : 

*' Hardly had the words left the teller's lips 
than there arose a wild, raging, mad-brained shout 
from floor to gallery, such as had never been 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 123 

heard in the present House of Commons. Dozens 
of half -frantic Tories stood up in their seats, 
madly waved their hats, and hurrahed at the 
top of their voices. Strangers in both galleries 
clapped their hands. The Adullamites on the 
ministerial benches, carried away by the delirium 
of the moment, waved their hats in sympathy 
with the Opposition, and cheered as loudly as any. 
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his speech, 
had politely performed the operation of holding 
a candle to Lucifer (Mr. Lowe) ; and he, the 
prince of the revolt, the leader, instigator, and 
prime mover of the conspiracy, stood" up in the 
excitement of the moment — flushed, triumphant, 
and avenged. His hair, brighter than silver, 
shone and glistened in the brilliant light. His 
complexion had deepened into something like 
bishop's purple. His small, regular, and almost 
woman-like features, always instinct with intelli- 
gence, now mantled with the liveliest pleasure. 
He took off his hat, waved it in wide and tri- 
umphant circles over the heads of the very men 
who had just gone into the lobby against him. 
* Who would have thought there was so much in 
Bob Lowe?' said one member to another ; *why, 
he was one of the cleverest men in Lord Palmers- 
ton's Government ! ' * All this comes of Lord 
Russell's sending for Goschen,' was the reply. 
' Disraeli did not half so signally avenge himself 
against Peel,' interposed another • ' Lowe has very 



124 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

nearly broken up the Liberal party.' These may 
seem to be exaggerated estimates of the situation ; 
but in that moment of agitation and excitement 
I dare say a hundred sillier things were said 
and agreed to. Anyhow, there he stood, that 
usually cold, undemonstrative, intellectual, white- 
headed, red -faced, venerable-looking arch -con- 
spirator ! shouting himself hoarse, like the ring- 
leader of schoolboys at a successful barring-out, 
and amply repaid at that moment for all Skye- 
terrier witticisms and any amount of popular 
obloquy ! But, see, the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer lifts up his hand to bespeak silence, as if 
he had something to say in regard to the result 
of the division. But the more the great orator 
lifts his hand beseechingly, the more the cheers 
are renewed and the hats waved. At length the 
noise comes to an end by the process of exhaustion, 
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer rises. Then 
there is a universal hush, and you might hear a 
pin drop. He simply says, * Sir, I propose to fix 
the committee for Monday, and I will then state 
the order of business.' It was twilight, brighten- 
ing into day, when we got out into the welcome 
fresh air of New Palace Yard. Early as was the 
hour, about three hundred persons were assembled 
to see the members come out, and to cheer the 
friends of the bill. It was a night to be long re- 
membered. The House of Commons had lis- 
tened to the grandest oration ever yet delivered 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 125 

by the greatest orator of his age ; and had then 
to ask itself how it happened that the Liberal 
party had been disunited, and a Liberal majority 
of sixty ' muddled away. ' " 

The division is said to have been the largest 
that ever occurred — out of a total membership 
of 658, including the Speaker, 631 had voted. 
And the division list revealed how and why the 
Liberal majority had been ^^ muddled away." 
With the Government only two Conservatives had 
voted, but against them there were arrayed 31 
Liberals (AduUamites) and 382 Conservatives. 
The cause of Reform had been betrayed by its pro- 
fessed friends. 

" The Opposition " (to quote again from Mr. 
Molesworth's excellent History) " had good 
grounds for their exultation, and the Ministerial- 
ists for their depression ; for the victory of the 
Government was worse than a defeat. Their ma- 
jority was so small as hardly to leave a prospect 
of carrying the measure ; and yet, having a ma- 
jority, they were obliged, after all the pledges 
they had given, to proceed with the bill, to dis- 
solve, or to resign. Intense interest was felt to 
know which of these courses they would adopt. 
The consequence was that, at the time of the 
commencement of business, on Monday after- 
noon, the House was crowded, in anticipation of 
a statement which Mr. Gladstone had announced 
that he intended to make. He rose shortly before 



126 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

five o'clock, and informed the House that the 
Government would proceed with the bill ; that 
on Monday evening next leave would be asked to 
introduce the Distribution-of-seats bill ; that bills 
for Scotland and Ireland would be brought in 
the same evening, and would be proceeded with 
at the same time with the Franchise bill. The 
House received these announcements in silence. 
The decisive battle between the two parties was 
still to be fought. 

" On Monday, the 7th of May, the struggle 
took a new shape. On that day the whole of the 
Government plan of reform was laid before the 
House. Besides the Franchise bill, which, as we 
have already seen, had been very fully discussed, 
the promised bill for the redistribution of seats, 
and the Scotch and the Irish bills were brought 
forward. ... On Monday, May 14th, the Redis- 
tribution bill was read a second time, in a House 
consisting of some nine or ten members. Mr. 
Gladstone announced at the close of the debate, 
in reply to a question put by Sir S. Northcote, 
that he would, on behalf of the Government, ac- 
cede to a proposition to combine the Franchise and 
Redistribution bills, and submit them to one com- 
mittee on that day fortnight. Accordingly, at 
the specified time, the two bills were committed 
together, Mr. Gladstone proposing, and the com- 
mittee accepting, some amendments which were 
required in order to effect their amalgamation. 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 127 

We will not weary our readers by tracing the prog- 
ress of the bill through committee. Suffice it, 
therefore, to say, that after a defeat on a motion 
of Sir K. Knightley, that ' it be an instruction to 
the committee that they have power to make pro- 
vision for the better prevention of bribery and 
corruption,' the measure floated on till Monday, 
18th of June, when the clause was reached which 
enacted a rental franchise in boroughs. Lord 
Dunkellin, usually a supporter of the Government, 
moved as an amendment on this clause that rating 
should be substituted for rental, on the ground 
that this alteration would oppose an insurmount- 
able * barrier to universal suffrage,' while it would 
admit the best qualified of the working class to 
the franchise. On this motion the House divided, 
and the numbers were : 

For the amendment 315 

Against 304 



Majority against the Government. ... 11 

The announcement of these numbers was received 
by the Opposition and the Cave with shouts 
even more deafening than those which had been 
raised when it was found that the second read- 
ing had been carried by a majority of five only." 

On the following day, the 19th of June, Earl 
Kussell in the Lords and Mr. Gladstone in the 
Commons announced that, in consequence of their 



128 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

late defeat, the Government had felt it to he their 
duty to make a communication to her Majesty ; 
and on the 26th Earl Russell stated that the Min- 
isters had tendered their resignations, to which 
they had adhered, notwithstanding an appeal from 
the Queen to reconsider their determination. The 
Earl of Derby, therefore, though his party was in 
a hopeless minority in the House of Commons, 
formed a ministry, with Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor 
of the Exchequer and leader of the House, Lord 
Stanley as Foreign Secretary, and Sir Stafford 
Northcote as President of the Board of Trade. 

Though thus defeated and arrested in Parlia- 
ment, the cause of Reform was not allowed to 
sleep. Those who regarded themselves as unjustly 
excluded from the franchise became convinced 
that their claims would never be conceded by the 
Legislature unless, as in 1832, they took the matter 
into their own hands, and showed in an unmis- 
takable manner to both friends and foes that 
they were thoroughly in earnest, and that, what- 
ever Conservative reaction there might be among 
the enfranchised classes, it did not extend to those 
who were denied a share in the election of repre- 
sentatives to the House of Commons. A great 
Reform league was accordingly formed for the pur- 
pose of holding outdoor meetings and otherwise 
agitating in favor of the measure from which it 
took its name. On the 23d of July a riot oc- 
curred in Hyde Park in consequence of resistance 



THE REFORM BILLS OF 1866-'67. 129 

by the Government to a proposed demonstration 
of the league. On the 27th of August a monster 
meeting was lield at Birmingham, the number 
attending being estimated at 250,000 ; and at 
Manchester another demonstration was attended 
by about 150,000 persons. 

During the entire autumn and winter the 
agitation was industriously prosecuted ; and by 
the time of the meeting of Parliament (in Febru- 
ary, 1867) the Ministry had become convinced 
that neither the people nor the House of Com- 
mons would allow the question to remain any 
longer in abeyance — *Hhe Ministry could not have 
retained office a single fortnight after the com- 
mencement of the session if it had declined to 
deal with it." Yet there were obvious difficulties 
in the way of a party, that had al lalong dreaded 
and opposed any extension of the suffrage, taking 
the lead in a measure of Parliamentary reform 
which should meet and satisfy demands that, as 
usual, had grown with agitation. In the accom- 
plishment of his object, Mr. Disraeli's first task 
was, as he himself said, ** to educate our party up 
to it." 

His education was so effective that even the 
Earl of Derby consented to advocate what he 
characterized as *^a leap in the dark"; but the 
Conservative party was not without its revolters 
and its Cave of Adullam. Three of the most 
prominent members of the Cabinet resigned, and 
9 



130 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

several of his quondam supporters assailed Mr. 
Disraeli in the bitterest language of invective. 
Mr. Beresford Hope declared that *^ sink or swim, 
dissolution or no dissolution, whether he was in 
the next Parliament or out of it, he for one, with 
his whole heart and conscience, would vote against 
the Asian mystery." And Lord Cranborne (now 
the Marquis of Salisbury, and Lord Beaconsfield's 
most trusted lieutenant) said : "I desire to pro- 
test, in the most earnest language I am capable of 
using, against the political morality on which the 
manoeuvres of this year have been based. If you 
borrow your political ethics from the ethics of the 
political adventurer, you may depend upon it, 
the whole of your representative institutions will 
crumble beneath your feet." 

Mr. Disraeli introduced his measure on the 
18th of March, and it was so unsatisfactory that 
it speedily became apparent that its rejection was 
inevitable, Mr. Gladstone pointing out nine de- 
fects which called for amendment, and evidently 
having the sense of the House with him. Per- 
ceiving the fate that awaited him, Mr. Disraeli 
allowed it to be seen that he was " squeezable " ; 
and, in fact, so many changes were effected in the 
bill during its passage through committee that it 
was completely transformed. On the 15th of 
July the bill as amended was read a third time in 
the House of Commons, and on the 6th of August 
passed the House of Lords. 



THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. 131 

Thus Mr. Disraeli, having accomplished the 
unprecedented feat of ^^ educating" his own party 
up to the support of a measure opposed to all 
their principles and traditions, *' dished the 
Whigs" by passing a Reform bill exceeding in 
its democratic tendencies any that had ever been 
proposed by a responsible Liberal Ministry. 

Shortly after this remarkable achievement (in 
February, 1868) Mr. Disraeli became leader of 
the Conservative party and Prime Minister of 
England, the Earl of Derby having retired on the 
plea of ill health. 



XL 



ELECTORAL STRUGGLE OVER THE IRISH CHURCH 
QUESTION^. 

The opening of the session of 1868 witnessed 
a state of things said to be without a parallel in 
the history of England — a Ministry holding the 
reins of power in spite of the fact that its sup- 
porters were in a decided minority in the House 
of Commons. Mr. Bouverie, a Liberal, calling 
attention to the condition of parties, asked : 
*'Why are the Conservatives now in power? 
Simply because the Liberal party, though an un- 
doubted majority in this House, and representing 



132 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

a vast preponderance of opinion in the country, 
does not deserve to be called a party. That may 
be an unpalatable truth, but it is a truth, notwith- 
standing. We have leaders that won't lead, and 
followers that won't follow. Instead of an organ- 
ized party, we are little better than a rabble." 

This reproach, though justified at the time it 
was uttered, was destined to be speedily removed. 
Other progressive questions besides that of Par- 
liamentary Reform were pressing for solution, and 
soon one came to the front which united the 
Liberal party to a degree previously unknown, 
and aroused the keenest popular interest. Mr. 
Maguire moved that the House resolve itself into 
a committee to take the condition of Ireland into 
immediate consideration. The debate upon this 
motion has been called ^' the most important of 
the generation," and toward the close of it, on the 
16th of March, Mr. Gladstone struck the first 
blow in the struggle that was destined to end in 
the disestablishment of the Irish Church. He 
complained that the Ministerial programme of 
the session's work failed to realize the grave 
fact that a crisis in the Irish question had been 
reached. Ireland, he said, had an account with 
England which had endured for centuries, and 
Englishmen had not done enough to place them- 
selves in the right. Coming to appeals for re- 
ligious equality, he affirmed that it must be 
established, difficult as the operation might be ; 



THE IRIfeH CHURCH QUESTION. 133 

but he condemned the principle of leveling up. 
As to the appeals which had been made urging 
the Irish people to loyalty and to union, Mr. 
Gladstone said that was his object, too ; but with 
regard to the means the differences were still pro- 
found, and it was idle, it was mockery, to use 
words unless they could sustain them by corre- 
sponding substances. They must give the un- 
reserved devotion of their efforts ; and, after 
warning Mr. Disraeli that, unless he had some- 
thing more satisfactory to say on the subject of 
justice to Ireland than his colleagues, this ques- 
tion would immediately press for settlement, he 
concluded as follows : 

" If we are prudent men, I hope we shall endeavor, 
as far as in us lies, to make some provision for a contin- 
gent, a doubtful, and probably a dangerous future. If we 
be chivalrous men, I trust we shall endeavor to wipe 
away all those stains which the civilized world has for 
ages seen, or seemed to see, on the shield of England in 
her treatment of Ireland. If we be compassionate men, 
I hope we shall now, once for all, listen to the tale of 
woe which comes from her, and the reality of which, if not 
its justice, is testified by the continuous migration of her 
people — that we shall endeavor to 

' Raze out the written troubles from her brain, 
Pluck from her memory the rooted sorrow.' 

But, above all, if we be just men, we shall go forward in 
the name of truth and right, bearing this in mind — that, 
when the case is proved, and the hour is come, justice 
delayed is justice denied." 



134 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

** This speech," says Mr. Smith, ^^ excited feel- 
ings of consternation among the Ministerialists. 
Mr. Disraeli bewailed his own unhappy fate, at the 
commencement of his career of Prime Minister, at 
finding himself face to face with the imperious 
necessity of settling out of hand an account seven 
centuries old. He complained that all the ele- 
ments of the Irish crisis had existed while Mr. 
Gladstone was in office, but no attempt had been 
made to deal with them. The spirit of the age 
was not, he asserted, opposed to endowments, as 
had been laid down by Mr. Bright — who, with the 
aid of the philosophers, had now converted Mr. 
Gladstone to the same opinion. For himself, he was 
personally in favor of ecclesiastical endowments, 
and strongly objected to the destruction of the 
Irish Church. Mr. Maguire, being urged thereto 
by Mr. Gladstone, withdrew his motion. 

'* But, with the express declarations of the leader 
of the Opposition, the Irish Church question had 
moved forward an enormous stage. To go back 
now was impossible, and to stand still was equally 
impossible. Mr. Gladstone's address became the 
basis of action for the Liberal party, and the 
country speedily took up the cry of disestablish- 
ment. The right honorable gentleman himself, not 
shrinking from followmg up the policy he had in- 
dicated, with all convenient speed, laid upon the 
table of the House of Commons the following 
resolutions upon the Irish Church, which he 



THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. 135 

intended to move in committee of the whole 
House : 

**1. That in the opinion of this House it is 
necessary that the Established Church of Ireland 
should cease to exist as an Establishment, due re- 
gard being had to all personal interests and to all 
individual rights of property. 

" 2. That, subject to the foregoing considera- 
tions, it is expedient to prevent the creation of 
new personal interests by the exercise of any pub- 
lic patronage, and to confine the operations of the 
Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Ireland to objects 
of immediate necessity, or involving individual 
rights, pending the final decision of Parliament. 

" 3. That an humble address be presented to 
her Majesty, humbly to pray that, with a view to 
the purposes aforesaid, her Majesty will be gra- 
ciously pleased to place at the disposal of Parlia- 
ment her interest in the temporalities, in arch- 
bishoprics, bishoprics, and other ecclesiastical 
dignities and benefices in Ireland and in the 
custody thereof." 

The Government vigorously opposed the mea- 
sure. Lord Stanley moving an amendment to the 
effect that in the opinion of the House any propo- 
sition tending to the disestablishment or disen- 
dowment of the United Church in Ireland ought 
to be reserved for the decision of a new Parlia- 
ment. On this motion battle was joined, and on 
the 30th of March the conflict began with a power- 



136 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ful speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone in a House 
crowded with eager listeners. The titles of the 
acts relating to the Church Establishment, the 
5th article of the Act of Union, and the corona- 
tion oath of the Sovereign, having been read from 
the table, Mr. Gladstone remarked that these ex- 
tracts from existing laws would serve to remind 
the House that they were about to enter upon a 
solemn duty. Having indicated his method of 
procedure, he proposed — if the House should de- 
clare its opinion that the Irish Establishment 
should cease to exist — that the cessation should 
be effected in a manner worthy of the nation, 
affording ample consideration and satisfaction to 
every proprietary and vested right. The residue, 
after satisfying every just claim, should be treated 
as an Irish fund, applicable to the exclusive bene- 
fit of Ireland. Both the Liberal party and the 
Conservative party, he said, were justified hitherto 
in not taking up the subject, for previous to this 
time no state of public feeling or opinion would 
have enabled this great question to be opened on 
the wide basis which it required. He denied that 
the disendowment of the Irish Church would bo 
dangerous to the English Establishment. What 
was dangerous to the latter was to hold her in 
communion with a state of things politically dan- 
gerous and socially unjust. The existence of the 
Irish Church was not necessary for the mainte- 
nance of Protestantism in Ireland. Though the 



THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. 137 

census of 1861 showed a small proportionate in- 
crease of Protestants, the rate of conversion was 
so small that it would take 1,500 or 2,000 years to 
effect an entire conversion, if it went on at the 
same rate. The final arrangements in this matter 
might be left to a reformed Parliament, but he 
proposed that they should prevent by legislation 
this session the growing of a new crop of vested 
interests. There had been a connection between 
England and Ireland for seven hundred years, 
but it had been marked by a succession of storms 
and temporary calms. He called upon the House 
to settle its account with the sister island by re- 
moving the whole cause of dispute. He thus elo- 
quently concluded his address : 

" There are many who think that to lay hands upon 
the national Church Establishment of a country is a 
profane and unhallowed act. I respect that feeling. I 
sympathize with it. I sympathize with it, while I think 
it my duty to overcome and repress it. But, if it be an 
error, it is an error entitled to respect. There is some- 
thing in the idea of a national establishment of religion, 
of a solemn appropriation of a part of the common- 
wealth for conferring upon all who are ready to receive 
it what we know to be an inestimable benefit ; of saving 
that portion of the inheritance from private selfishness, 
in order to extract from it, if we can, pure and unmixed 
advantages of the highest order for the population at 
large. There is something in this so attractive that it is 
an image that must always command the homage of the 
many. It is somewhat like the kingly ghost in ' Hamlet,' 
of which one of the characters of iShakespeare says : 



138 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

* We do it wrong, being so majestical, 
To offer it the show of violence ; 
For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 

And our vain blows malicious mockery.' 

But, sir, this is to view a religious establishment upon 
one side only, upon what I may call the ethereal side. 
It has likewise a side of earth ; and here I can not do 
better than quote some lines written by the present Arch- 
bishop of Dublin, at a time when his genius was devoted 
to the muses. He said, in speaking of mankind : 

' We who did our lineage high 
Draw from beyond the starry sky, 
Are yet upon the other side, 
To earth and to its dust allied.' 

And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory 
and in its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is 
it but an appropriation of public property — an appropria- 
tion of the fruits of labor and of skill to certain pur- 
poses? and unless these purposes are fulfilled, that appro- 
priation can not be Justified. Therefore, sir, I can not but 
feel that we must set aside fears which thrust themselves 
upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates 
of our judgment. I think it has been shown that the 
cause for action is strong — not for precipitate action, not 
for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the 
opportunities of the times and the condition of Parlia- 
ment, if there be but a ready will, will amply and easily 
admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the 
issue of this struggle, 1 begin by frankly avowing that 
I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I be- 
lieved that the final hour was about to sound — 

* Venit summa dirs et ineluctabile fatum.' 



THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. 139 

And I hope that the noble lord will forgive me if I say 
that before Friday last I thought that the thread of the 
remaining life of the Irish Established Church was 
short, but that, since Friday last, when at half past four 
o'clock in the afternoon the noble lord stood at that 
table, I have regarded it as being shorter still. The 
issue is not in our hands. What we had and have to 
do is to consider well and deeply before we take the first 
step in an engagement such as this ; but, having entered 
into the controversy, there and then to acquit ourselves 
like men, and to use every effort to remove what still 
remains of the scandals and calamities in the relations 
which exist between England and Ireland, and to make 
our best efforts at least to fill up with the cement of 
human concord the noble fabric of the British Empire." 

In the debate which followed, Lord Stanley, 
Lord Cranborne, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, Mr. Lowe, 
and Mr. Disraeli made forcible speeches ; and 
then Mr. Gladstone made a closing address, in 
which he said that he did not conceal his inten- 
tion to separate Church from State in Ireland, and 
that he asked the expiring Parliament to pro- 
nounce an opinion which would clear the way for 
its successor. In the division the numbers were 
— for Lord Stanley's amendment, 270 ; against, 
331 — majority against the Government, 61. On 
the second division for going into committee, 
there appeared — for the motion, 328 ; against, 272 
— majority for Mr. Gladstone's motion, 56. 

This emphatic expression of opinion within 
the House of Commons was reflected out of doors, 



140 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

in a series of great public meetings, which were 
held in London and the provinces to express sym- 
pathy with the agitation ; and both sides prepared 
actively for a conflict which it was felt must prove 
decisive. 

Meanwhile, the issue in the House had only 
been fairly joined, not fought out ; but, on the 
30th of April, after a discussion extending over 
eleven nights, Mr. Gladstone's first resolution was 
carried by a majority of 65. The usual course for 
Government after such a defeat was either to re- 
sign or to dissolve Parliament ; but Mr. Disraeli 
resolved to postpone dissolution until the autumn, 
and in the mean time to carry through such mea- 
sures for Scotland and Ireland as would enable the 
new Parliament to be elected under the provisions 
of the new Reform bill. Mr. Gladstone's second 
and third resolutions were passed without a divi- 
sion, and on May 14th he obtained leave to bring 
in a bill to prevent for a limited time new ap- 
pointments in the Irish Church, and to restrain 
for the same period the proceedings of the ecclesi- 
astical commissions for Ireland. On the 22d, 
after a lengthy discussion, this suspensory bill 
was read a second time, the majority in favor of 
it being 54. Subsequently, the bill was thrown 
out in the House of Lords, but this was now of 
small consequence, as the great question was to 
be remitted for settlement to the constituencies. 
On the 31st of July Parliament was prorogued, 



THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. I4I 

with a view to its dissolution in November, and 
on the 11th of November writs were issued for a 
new election. 

The general election which ensued was decid- 
edly the most remarkable that had occurred since 
that which followed the passing of the Reform Act 
of 1832 ; and its most remarkable incident was the 
defeat of Mr. Gladstone for South Lancashire. 
This was accomplished by tremendous exertions 
on the part of his opponents, concentrated with 
all the power of personal dislike and party hatred ; 
but the effect was of small practical importance, 
for, while the contest was yet undecided, Green- 
wich returned him without expense and without 
solicitation on his part. Other prominent Lib- 
erals experienced unexpected defeats — notably 
John Stuart Mill in Westminster, and the Mar- 
quis of Hartington in North Lancashire — but in 
the country at large an enormous preponderance 
of Liberal feeling was manifested, and, when the 
elections were completed, it was evident that the 
party policy would be supported by a majority of 
something like 120 in the new Parliament. 

The national verdict being so unmistakable, 
Mr. Disraeli did not wait for the meeting of Par- 
liament, but promptly resigned ; and on the 4th 
of December the Queen sent for Mr. Gladstone 
and authorized him to form a ministry. ^Tew 
governments," says Mr. Molesworth, '*have ever 
been more popular than this administration at the 



142 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

time of its accession to office. This was chiefly 
due to the presence in it of Messrs. Gladstone and 
Bright, in whom the overwhelming majority of 
the nation had great confidence, and who, on 
every occasion in which they appeared in public, 
were objects of the warmest demonstrations of 
the favor and confidence with which they were 
regarded." 



XII. 

THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM. 



99 



At the opening of the session of Parliament 
for 1869 Mr. Gladstone found himself at the head 
of an irresistible majority in the House of Com- 
mons — *^a Prime Minister personally more power- 
ful than any who had held the reins of State 
since the palmiest days of Sir Eobert Peel. " Much 
curiosity was felt as to what he would do with his 
power ; and there were not wanting those who 
predicted that Mr. Gladstone at the head of the 
Government would be less eager to deal with so 
difficult a question as the Irish Church than Mr. 
Gladstone at the head of a turbulent Opposition. 
Such prophecies, however, were speedily falsified. 
The Queen's speech promised that the ecclesias- 
tical arrangements of Ireland would be brought 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM." US 

under the consideration of the House at a very 
early date ; and promptly on the 1st of March 
Mr. Gladstone introduced his great measure for 
the disestablishment and partial disendowment of 
the Irish Church. 

Referring to the speech in which he unfolded 
his scheme, Mr. Wemyss Reid says : *' For three 
hours did that speech flow on without interrup- 
tion ; it was long enough to have filled a goodly 
sized volume, and yet from first to last the Pre- 
mier had each one of his countless figures and facts 
in its proper place ; and never halted or stumbled 
for a moment while performing his tremendous 
task. " Mr. Disraeli himself afterward described the 
speech as eloquent, full, adequate, and not contain- 
ing one unnecessary word ; and the "Daily Tele- 
graph " of the next day said : '^^ With that consum- 
mate skill which in old days made a fine art of 
finance and taught us all the romance of the rev- 
enue, Mr. Gladstone made his statistics ornamental, 
and deftly wove the stiffest strings of figures into 
the web of his exposition. Scarcely even so much 
as glancing at his notes, he advanced with an ora- 
torical step, which positively never once faltered 
from exordium to peroration of his amazing task ; 
omitting nothing, slurring nothing, confusing 
nothing ; but pouring from his prodigious faculty 
of thought, memory, and speech an explanation 
so lucid that none of all the many points which 
he made was obscure to any of his listeners when 



144 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

he had finished. And, charged as the speech ne- 
cessarily was with hard and stern matter of fact 
and figure, the intense earnestness, the sincere 
satisfaction of the speaker at the act of concord 
and justice he was inaugurating, gave such elas- 
ticity and play to his genius that nowhere was 
the clause so dry or the calculation so involved, 
but some gentle phrase of respect, some high in- 
vocation of principle, some bright illumination 
of the theme from actual life, some graceful com- 
pliment to his hearers, lightened the passage of 
these mountains of statistics, and kept the House 
spellbound by that rich and energetic voice. 
This praise may seem extravagant ; but, though 
Mr. Gladstone has done many things of marvel- 
ous intellectual and oratorical force, his exposi- 
tion last evening of the measure from which will 
assuredly date the pacification and happiness of 
Ireland was a Parliamentary achievement un- 
paralleled even by himself." 

The peroration of the speech is worth repro- 
ducing, since it has always been regarded as one 
of the orator's happiest efforts : 

"I do not know in what country so great a change, 
60 great a transition, has been proposed for the min- 
isters of a religious communion who have enjoyed for 
many ages the preferred position of an Established 
Church. I can well understand that to many in the 
Irish Establishment such a change appears to be nothing 
Vess than ruin and destruction ; from the height on which 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM.' 145 

they DOW stand tlie future is to them au abyss, and their 
fears recall the words used in 'King Lear,' when Edgar 
endeavors to persuade Gloster that he has fallen over 
the cliffs of Dover, and says : 

' Ten masts at each make not the altitude 
Which thou hast perpendicularly fallen ; 
Thy life's a miracle ! ' 

And yet but a little while after the old man is relieved 
from his delusion, and finds he has not fallen at all. So 
I trust that when, instead of the fictitious and adven- 
titious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish 
Establishment to lean, it should come to place its trust 
in its own resources, in its own great mission, in all that 
it cm draw from the energy of its ministers and its mem- 
bers, and the high hopes and promises of the Gospel that 
it teaches, it will find that it has entered upon a new 
era of existence — an era bright with hope and potent 
for good. At any rate, I think the day has certainly 
come when an end is finally to be put to that union, not 
between the Church and religious association, but be- 
tween the Establishment and the State, which was com- 
menced under circumstances little auspicious, and has 
endured to be a source of nnhappiness to Ireland and of 
discredit and scandal to England. There is more to say. 
This measure is in every sense a great measure— great 
in its principles, great in the multitude of its dry, tech- 
nical, but interesting detail, and great as a testing measure ; 
for it will show for one and all of us of what metal we 
are made. Upon us all it brings a great responsibility — 
great and foremost upon those who occupy this bench. 
We are especially chargeable, nay, deeply guilty, if we 
have either dishonestly, as some think, or even pre- 
maturely or unwisely, challenged so gigantic an issue. I 
10 



146 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

know well the punishments that follow rashness in pub- 
lic affairs, and that ought to fall upon those men, those 
Phaetons of politics, who, with hands unequal to the 
task, attempt to guide the chariot of the sun. But the 
responsibility, though heavy, does not exclusively press 
upon us ; it presses upon every man who has to take 
part in the discussion and decision upon this bill. Every 
man approaches the discussion under the most solemn 
obligations to raise the level of his vision and expand its 
scope in proportion with the greatness of the matter in 
hand. The working of our constitutional government 
itself is upon its trial, for I do not believe there ever 
was a time when the wheels of legislative machinery 
were set in motion under conditions of peace and order 
and constitutional regularity to deal with a question 
greater or more profound. And more especially, sir, are 
the credit and fame of this great assembly involved ; 
this assembly, which has inherited through many ages 
the accumulated honors of brilliant triumphs, of peace- 
ful but courageous legislation, is now called upon to 
address itself to a task which would, indeed, have de- 
manded all the best energies of the very best among 
your fathers and your ancestors. I believe it will prove 
to be worthy of the task. Should it fail, even the fame 
of the House of Commons will suffer disparagement ; 
should it succeed, even that fame, I venture to say, will 
receive no small, no insensible addition. I must not ask 
gentlemen opposite to concur in this view, emboldened 
as I am by the kindness they have shown me in listening 
with patience to a statement which could not have been 
other than tedious ; but I pray them to bear with me 
for a moment while, for myself and my colleagues, I say 
we are sanguine of the issue. We believe, and for my part 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM." I47 

I am deeply convinced, that, when the final consumma- 
tion shall arrive, and when the words are spoken that 
shall give the force of law to the work embodied in this 
measure — the work of peace and justice — those words 
will be echoed upon every shore where the name of 
Ireland or the name of Great Britain has been heard, 
and the answer to them will come back in the approving 
verdict of civilized mankind." 

Mr. Disraeli did not oppose the introduction 
of the bill, but demanded a period of three weeks 
in which to consider it. This delay Mr. Glad- 
stone declined to concede, and it was ultimately 
agreed that the second reading should be proposed 
on the 18th of March. 

*' Perhaps an abler and more eloquent debate," 
says Mr. Moles worth, "never was carried on in 
the House of Commons than that on the second 
reading of this measure. Not to mention speakers 
of less importance who took part in it, there was 
Mr. Disraeli, who moved that the bill should be 
read that day six months, and who, though of 
course aware that he was playing a losing game, 
delivered one of the most forcible speeches he ever 
pronounced in the House of Commons.* On the 
same side Dr. Ball spoke with the volubility for 
which his countrymen are remarkable, and with 
an ability which threw into the shade all the able 

* The London " Times " took a less favorable view of 
the speech, describing it as " flimsiness relieved by span- 
gles — the definition of a columbine's skirt." 



148 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

efforts he had previously made. Mr. Miall de- 
h\ ered his views on the other side with the author- 
ity which his long and consistent advocacy of the 
change now about to be effected gave him, and 
who was listened to by all parties with a respect- 
ful attention seldom accorded by the House to one 
known as a strong partisan. Mr. Bright gave the 
measure the support of his high reputation and 
splendid eloquence. The interest he took in the 
question made him surpass himself, and the con- 
clusion of his speech, in which he claimed for the 
bill before the House the support of the Supreme 
Being, as to a measure which was in accordance 
with His glorious attributes of truth, justice, and 
mercy, was delivered with a manifest earnestness 
and sincerity which made perhaps as profound an 
impression as anything that ever was uttered with- 
in the walls of Parliament. He was followed by 
an antagonist in every way worthy of him — Sir 
Roundell Palmer, whose conscientious conviction 
on this question had prevented him from joining 
a ministry whose political views were in other re- 
spects in harmony with his own opinions, and 
who had declined the Chancellorship and a peer- 
age, to which the services he had rendered to the 
Liberal party had given him an undeniable claim, 
rather than consent to a measure which he dis- 
approved. He commanded the attention to which 
his high character and the noble sacrifice he had 
made entitled him no less than the force and elo- 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM." 149 

quence with which he urged his opinions. Ad- 
mitting the existence of the discontent, he denied 
that the remedy jiroposed for it by the Govern- 
ment was the right one. Admitting that the ex- 
istence of tlie Established Church in Ireland was 
a grievance, he argued that the grievance miglit 
be removed without a confiscation of the property 
of the Irish Church. He was answered with not 
unequal eloquence by the Solicitor-General, Sir J. 
Coleridge, who, however, after a brief and respect- 
ful reply to the argument of Sir R. Palmer, applied 
himself to the evidently more congenial task of 
pointing out the necessity that existed for the 
measure, and the advantages it was calculated to 
produce. The case for the bill was ingeniously 
and ably put by Mr. Lowe, the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, who met the powerful argument of Sir 
R. Palmer by asking the House if they would con- 
sent to disestablish the Irish Church and to leave 
it in possession of £16,000,000 worth of property 
without connection with the State, and without 
check even from the ecclesiastical courts. . . . 
But of all the speeches against the bill, decidedly 
the ablest and most eloquent was that which was 
delivered by Mr. Gathorne Hardy toward the close 
of the long debate, and it was received by the 
party which he represented with applauses far 
louder and more rapturous than had been bestowed 
on the colder and more argumentative address of 
their leader. He could discover no reason for 



150 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

this attack on the Irish Church but jealousy like 
that which animated Haman. He denied that 
the Church was a badge of conquest ; he rather 
regarded it as an imperial light, as a recognition 
by the Executive of the superior tenderness of the 
Almighty, as a token of the Protestantism of the 
Sovereign, as a keeping alive in the dark places of 
Ireland the lamp of the Eeformation. He main- 
tained that the bill, instead of restoring peace and 
concord in Ireland, would revive agitation and 
increase discontent. He ran rapidly over the 
chief features of the disendowment scheme, in 
order to show that they would fail to soften the 
irritation of those who would feel themselves 
specially aggrieved by the measure. He said that 
the gift of churches and glebes called for no grat- 
itude. The purchase of the tithe rent-charge was 
a puzzle, the treatment of Maynooth a mockery, 
the Church body a delusion, the proposed disposal 
of the surplus for the foundation of new religious 
endowments, and their seizure for imperial pur- 
poses, both violations of the pledges of last year. 
He ended by drawing a highly colored picture of 
the condition of Ireland, in which he represented 
the institutions of the country as satisfactory, 
freedom complete, law as justly administered as 
in England ; but the people, discontented with- 
out any real cause, sympathizing with crime, and 
influenced, not for good, by the priesthood. He 
concluded, amid the loud cheering of the Oppo- 



"THE GOLDEX AGE OF LIBERALISM." 151 

sition, by insisting that an interval of peace and 
industry, and not a destructive measure such as 
that which was now brought forward — a measure 
wrong in the sight of God and opposed to the in- 
terests of the empire — was the real panacea for the 
evils under which Ireland was suffering." 

It was near one o'clock on the fourth evening 
of the debate that Mr. Gladstone rose to close the 
debate. He began by remarking that Mr. Hardy 
had shown his fitness for a task which Burke had 
disclaimed — that of drawing an indictment against 
a whole nation. Yet, even in a picture of the 
Irish people so unjust as to amount to a libel, 
serious evils were admitted, for which Mr. Hardy 
had no remedy. But the Government, recognizing 
the existence of the Irish question, the result of 
years of previous misgovernment, had a remedy 
which they proposed of necessity piecemeal. Kun- 
ning over the four nights' debate, he failed to dis- 
cover any rival plan that had been proposed in the 
place of that which he had brought forward, and 
the charges urged against the Government only 
proved that they had fairly fulfilled their pledge. 
In conclusion, he said : 

*' As the clock points rapidly toward the dawn, so 
are rapidly flowing out the years, the months, the days 
that remain to the existence of the Irish Established 
Church. . . . Not now are we opening this great ques- 
tion. Opened, perhaps, it was when the Parliament 
which expired last year pronounced upon it that em- 



152 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

phatic judgment which can never be recalled. Opened 
it was, further, when in the months of autumn the dis- 
cussions which were held in every quarter of the country 
turned mainly on the subject of the Irish Church. Prose- 
cuted another stage it was, when the completed elec- 
tions discovered to us a manifestation of the national 
verdict more emphatic than, with the rarest exceptions, 
has been witnessed during the whole of our Parliamen- 
tary history. The good cause was further advanced 
toward its triumphant issue when the silent acknowl- 
edgment of the late Government that they declined to 
contest the question was given by their retirement from 
office, and their choosing a less responsible position, from 
which to carry on a more desultory warfare against the 
policy which they had in the previous session unsuccess- 
fully attempted to resist. Another blow will soon be 
struck in the same good cause, and I will not intercept 
it one single moment more." 

The division was then taken, and the result 
was — for the second reading, 368 ; against, 250 ; 
majority for the Government, 118. This majority 
was overwhelming and decisive ; yet the progress 
through committee was so extremely slow that 
exactly three months had elapsed after the intro- 
duction of the bill before the third reading came 
on. The motion for a third reading was strenu- 
ously opposed, Mr. Disraeli declaring that the 
passage of the measure would lead to the ascend- 
ancy of the Papal power in Ireland, with a conse- 
quent reaction in England, and Mr. Gladstone 
making a final and eloquent defense of his scheme. 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM." 153 

On the division the Government had a majority 
of 114. 

In the House of Lords the bill narrowly es- 
caped being thrown out on the second reading, 
Lord Derby, in the last speech he ever made, de- 
nouncing it as a scheme the political folly of 
which was only equaled by its moral turpitude. 
But the peers had so often experienced the evil 
results of setting themselves against the clearly 
pronounced wishes of the people that the more 
prudent concluded to accept, with as good grace 
as they could muster, a bill which had come up 
from the Commons by a majority that rendered 
resistance evidently hopeless ; and the second 
reading was carried by a small majority. " The 
question now arose. What would be done in com- 
mittee ? Various amendments were carried of an 
important nature, to some of which the Govern- 
ment could not agree. The bill eventually passed 
the Lords by 121 to 114, under a protest signed 
by Lord Derby and forty-three temporal and two 
spiritual peers. The Lords' amendments were 
considered by the Commons, and the chief of 
them were disagreed with. They were then sent 
back to the Lords, and an animated debate ensued 
in the Upper House. Lord Grey complained that 
the Lords were humiliated and degraded, and 
Lord Salisbury said their lordships were called 
upon to yield to the arrogant will of a single man. 
The Earl of Winchilsea compared Mr. Gladstone 



154 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

to Jack Cade, and, after hinting at the coming of 
an Oliver Cromwell, declared that he was ready 
for the block sooner than surrender. A confer- 
ence upon contested points afterward took place 
between Lord Granville and Lord Cairns, and a 
compromise was arrived at. This compromise 
was accepted by the Commons, and on the 26th 
of July the Irish Church bill received the royal 
assent. " 

Thus passed a measure which had excited more 
angry controversy than any that had been pro- 
posed in Parliament since the great Reform bill 
of 1832. ** It was carried through its various 
stages," says a writer in the ''Annual Register," 
for 1869, *' mainly by the resolute will and un- 
flinching energy of the Prime Minister, who, 
throughout the long and arduous discussions, in 
which he took the leading part, displayed, in full 
measure, those qualities of acuteness, force of 
reasoning, and thorough mastery of his subject 
for which he had long been conspicuous, but 
which were never more signally exhibited than on 
this occasion. Upon the whole, whatever may 
be thought of its merits or demerits, it can hardly 
be disputed that the act for the disestablishment 
of the Irish Church, introduced and carried into 
a law within somewhat less than five months, 
was the most remarkable legislative achievement 
of modern times." 

In the course of the debate on the Irish Church 



"THE GOLDEX AGE OP LIBERALISM." 155 

bill Mr. Gladstone had announced that that bill 
was only part of a general scheme, which would 
have to be introduced piecemeal, and, accordingly, 
during the next session (1870) he introduced the 
second of his great remedial measures — the Irish 
Land bill, the object of which was to remove the 
more crying evils connected with the tenure and 
cultivation of land in Ireland. On the 15th of 
February he brought forward the bill in a crowded 
House, delivering a speech which was as con- 
vincing as it was eloquent, and which ended with 
the following fine passage : 

" If I am asked what I hope to effect by this bill, I 
certainly hope we shall effect a great change in Ireland ; 
but I hope also, and confidently believe, that this change 
will be accomplished by gentle means. Every line of the 
measure has been studied with the keenest desire that it 
shall import as little as possible of shock or violent alter- 
ation into any single arrangement now existing between 
landlord and tenant in Ireland. There is, no doubt, much 
to be undone ; there is, no doubt, much to be improved ; 
but what we desire is that the work of this bill should be 
like the work of Nature herself, when on the face of a 
desolated land she restores what has been laid waste by 
the wild and savage hand of man. Its operations, we 
believe, will be quiet and gradual. We wish to alarm 
none; we wish to injure no one. What we wish is that 
where there has been despondency there shall be hope; 
where there has been mistrust there shall be confidence ; 
where there has been alienation and hate there shall, how- 
ever gradually, be woven the ties of a strong attachment 



156 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

between man and man. This we know can not be done 
in a day. The measure has reference to evils which have 
been long at work ; their roots strike far back into by- 
gone centuries, and it is against the ordinance of Provi- 
dence, as it is against the interest of man, that immediate 
reparation should in such cases be possible ; for one of 
the main restraints of misdoing would be removed, if the 
consequences of misdoing could in a moment receive a 
remedy. For such reparation and such effects it is that 
we look from this bill, and we reckon on them not less 
surely and not less confidently because we know they 
must be gradual and slow ; and because we are likewise 
aware that, if it be poisoned by the malignant agency of 
angry or of bitter passions, it can not do its proper work. 
In order that there may be a hope of its entire success, 
it must pass — not as a triumph of party over party, or 
class over class; not as the lifting up of an ensign to re- 
cord the downfall of that which has once been great and 
powerful — but as a common work of common love and 
good-will to the common good of our common country. 
With such objects, and in such a spirit as that, this House 
will address itself to the work, and sustain the feeble 
efforts of the Government. And my hope, at least, is 
high and ardent that we shall live to see our work pros- 
per in our hand, and that in that Ireland which we desire 
to unite to England and Scotland by the only enduring 
ties — those of free-will and free affection — peace, order, 
and a settled and cheerful industry will diffuse their 
blessings from year to year, and from day to day, over a 
smiling land." 

There was no intention on the part of the Op- 
position to divide against the second reading of 



"THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM." 157 

the bill, but a division was forced by a few irre- 
<)oncilables with this extraordinary result — For 
^he second reading, 442; against, 11. Mr. Dis- 
raeli and many of his influential supporters went 
into the lobby with Mr. Gladstone. After many 
prolonged discussions, the bill was read a third 
time on the 30th of May, and, after passing in the 
Lords without a division, it received the royal 
assent on the 1st of August. 

Another important measure which was added 
to the statute book during the session of 1870 was 
an Elementary Education Act, by means of which 
cheap and efficient education was brought within 
reach of the poorest in the land. Both these mea- 
sures were passed in a session occupied with minor 
administrative reforms, and disturbed and inter- 
rupted by interpellations and debates on the policy 
of the Government with respect to the war between 
France and Prussia. 

The session of 1871 witnessed the passage of the 
Army Regulation bill, embodying the abolition of 
Purchase, which latter Mr. Gladstone finally ac- 
complished, in opposition to the House of Lords, 
by invoking the Royal Warrant. The Ballot bill 
was also passed in the Commons during this ses- 
sion, but was thrown out by the Lords. In the 
following year it was brought in again, and, being 
put in the forefront of the Government programme, 
was carried. In May of this year a threatened 
rupture between Great Britain and the United 



158 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

States was averted by the conclusion of the Treaty 
of Washington ; and a heated debate took place 
over the policy pursued by the Government on 
the occasion of Russia repudiating those portions 
of the Paris Treaty of 1856 which secured the 
neutralization of the Black Sea. 

To the years 1869, 1870, and 1871, Mr. Smith 
has given the designation which we have chosen as 
the title of the present chapter. ^' That period," 
he remarks, '^ which (to say nothing of minor 
measures) witnessed the passing of the Irish 
Church Act, the Endowed Schools bill, the Bank- 
ruptcy bill, the Habitual Criminals bill, the Irish 
Land Act, the Elementary Education Act, the 
Abolition of Purchase in the Army, the negotia- 
tion of the Washington treaty, the passing of the 
University Tests bill, and of the Trades Union 
bill, and the repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles 
Act, may well be entitled to the appellation of the 
golden age of Liberalism. There have been few 
periods in the history of this country — we might 
venture almost to say there have been none — 
when measures of equal magnitude have been 
passed within this limited space of time. ^ The 
hour and the man ' were both designed for the 
task which had to be accomplished. Never was 
there an age when a stronger zeal for reform was 
manifested — taking reform now not merely in a 
political and Parliamentary, but in a social, 
religious, and national sense ; and never was there 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 159 

a statesman more fully capable of meeting the needs 
of such an age than Mr. Gladstone. 



XIII. 

REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 

It is an unfortunate but a universal truth that 
great efforts produce reaction, and that enthusiasm 
subsides into lassitude ; and Mr. Gladstone had no 
soonei passed his great reform measures than he 
began to experience the effects of that reaction 
which follows upon unusual effort. As long as he 
could rely upon the united support of his party, 
he was irresistible ; but it was only on the Irish 
question that Mr. Bouverie's '' rabble " had become 
a disciplined a,rmy, and the Golden Age of Liber- 
alism had hardly begun when symptoms of discon- 
tent began to manifest themselves among different 
sections of Mr. Gladstone's followers. 

An influential section of the Nonconformists 
had resented a clause in the Education Act 
which extended did to denominationalists. The 
extinction of abuses by the Endowed School Com- 
mission led to piteous outcries. The clergy trem- 
bled for the Bible and for their schools. Mr. 
Gladstone's foreign policy was assailed with much 
clamor. There were patriots who would rather 



160 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

have fought over tlie Alabama Claims than have 
paid them ; and the Government was accused of 
playing a ** feeble" part in the Franco-German 
War. Opponents of the Abolition of Purchase 
declared the Constitution had been strained by 
the issue of the Royal Warrant. Mr. Bruce al- 
ienated the whole of the brewing interest by his 
licensing bill, and the Government were absurdly 
held responsible for a series of disasters reflecting 
upon the Admiralty. Indignation was aroused 
when Sir Robert Collier was gazetted as a Puisne 
Judge of the Common Pleas, for the purpose of 
qualifying him for an appointment to the Judicial 
Committee; and another *^ scandal" was pro- 
duced when the Rev. W. W. Harvey was made a 
member of the Oxford Convocation in order that 
he might succeed to the vacant rectory of Ewelme. 
Finally, several members of Mr. Gladstone's Cab- 
inet had succeeded in rendering themselves per- 
sonally unpopular. 

But the reaction was mainly due, as we have 
said, to more general causes. Mr. Gladstone had 
lived fast and traveled far. He had crowded as 
much work into three sessions as would formerly 
have been estimated as the full allowance of three 
Parliaments. He had done all and more than all 
that he had promised — far more than might reason- 
ably have been anticipated on his entering office. 
In fact, his pace had been far too rapid for his 
easy-going Whig supporters, and, when they found 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 161 

that the passage of the Irish bills had not secured 
them a respite, they began to murmur against 
so-called *' heroic " legislation. 

The first marked symptom of his waning 
popularity was shown in 1871, when a section of 
his own constituents drew up a petition inviting 
him to resign his seat for Greenwich. This 
movement was promptly repudiated by the ma- 
jority of his constituents, and Mr. Gladstone won 
back most of his personal popularity by a great 
open-air speech delivered on Blackheath to an au- 
dience of 20,000 persons ; but the discontent in 
Parliament was more dangerous and less easily 
dealt with. In the session of 1872 the growing 
apathy of his supporters was shown at the bring- 
ing in of the Ballot bill — a measure of the first 
importance, but for the division on the second 
reading of which the strenuous exertion of the 
party whips could muster an aggregate voting 
power of only 165. The third reading was carried 
by 276 votes against 218 ; figures which show that 
Mr. Gladstone still had a substantial majority in 
the House. But the crisis was reached when the 
Irish University bill brought about a new birth of 
the Cave of Adullam, and was defeated by a co- 
alition between the extreme Liberals and the ever- 
watchful Conservatives. 

Mr. Gladstone regarded this bill as calculated 
to efface the last of the religious and social griev- 
ances of Ireland, and as putting a finishing 
11 



162 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

stroke to the work to which his Government had 
pledged itself on coming into office. He intro- 
duced it at an early period of the session of 1873 
in " a remarkably able and argumentative speech ; 
which quite carried away the House ; and it was 
thought at first that the bill would command al- 
most unanimous support. But, when the measure 
came to be deliberately scanned, objections were 
raised against it which had not at first presented 
themselves, and it soon came to be seen that the 
bill would encounter the strong opposition of the 
Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, while many Irish 
Protestants were also induced to oppose it through 
an utterly unfounded fear that the Catholic claims 
would be conceded. " In fact, as one of its critics 
said, the bill ** offended everybody and pleased 
nobody," and, after a prolonged and animated de- 
bate, it was rejected by a majority of three in a 
House of 571 members. 

As Mr. Gladstone had distinctly declared in 
the course of the debate that the Government 
would stand or fall by their measure, he and his 
colleagues at once resigned their offices, and Mr. 
Disraeli was sent for by the Queen to form a new 
administration. Knowing that he would be in 
a hopeless minority in the House, Mr. Disraeli 
declined the task, and Mr. Gladstone reluctantly 
returned to office and resumed the business of the 
session. 

Naturally, the defeat of the Government did 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 163 

not improve either the temper or the prospects of 
the Liberal party, while it threw fresh vigor into 
the ranks of their opponents. *'The session," 
says Mr. Lucy, ** flickered to an end amid con- 
stant wrangles and an aggravating disregard for 
authority. In vain Mr. Ayrton had been cast 
overboard, and in vain Mr. Lowe repeated in his 
own person the role of Jonah. The Ministerial 
ship would not right, but lay in the trough of the 
sea, an object of derision from the fickle public 
who, five years earlier, had helped to launch it 
amid demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm. 
Buffeted abroad, assailed from within, angry, dis- 
pirited with existing circumstances, and hopeful 
of the verdict of a nation whose behests he had 
splendidly fulfilled, Mr. Gladstone suddenly cut 
the Gordian knot. On the 24th of January, 
1874, just on the eve of the assembling of Parlia- 
ment for the customary session, the country 
awoke to find that Parliament was dissolved. It 
was through the medium of an address to the 
electors of Greenwich that the startling news was 
communicated. There was considerable vigor in 
the lengthy document, and Mr. Gladstone, who a 
few months earlier, upon the resignation of Mr. 
Lowe, had returned to his old office of Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, promised a renewed exhibition 
of the magic with which the country was once 
familiar, and which should now be directed to the 
extinction of the income tax. But between the 



164 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

lines it was not difficult to read that the great 
statesman was weary and sick at heart. * If/ he 
said, * the trust of this Administration be by the 
effect of the present elections virtually renewed, I 
for one will serve you, for what remains of my time, 
gratefully ; if the confidence of the country be 
taken from us, and handed over to others whom 
you may deem more worthy, I for one will accept 
cheerfully my dismissal.' There was no presage 
of victory in such a call to battle. But in his 
gloomiest moments Mr. Gladstone could not have 
anticipated the full depth of the reverse of for- 
tune which awaited him at the poll. He himself 
narrowly escaped defeat at Greenwich — coming in 
second — the head of the poll being reserved for 
an estimable but obscure Conservative. Else- 
where, all along the line, the Liberals were de- 
feated. The solid phalanx that had carried the 
Irish Church bill, the Irish Land bill, the Edu- 
cation bill, and the Ballot bill was hopelessly 
shattered. When the gains and losses were 
counted up, it was found that Mr. Disraeli, meet- 
ing Parliament in 1874, was almost exactly in the 
same position as Mr. Gladstone had been when 
meeting Parliament in 1869. The pendulum, 
having swung violently to one side, had in return 
reached nearly the same altitude on the other." 

Discussing this result recently, in an article 
in the "Fortnightly Review," Mr. Henry Dunck- 
ley says : ** Mr. Gladstone's share in producing 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 165 

fchis catastrophe has not escaped censure. Un- 
doubtedly but for him it need not have happened 
when it did, and might not have happened at all. 
The Parliament of 1868 had still two sessions to 
live, and on every question but one the Govern- 
ment might count upon being supported by de- 
cisive majorities. In the course of two years the 
Conservative reaction might have itself reacted, 
while the Liberals would have had leisure to array 
their forces instead of being taken unawares. In 
any case, if defeat had come at last, it would have 
come in a less dramatic form, with less of pomp 
and circumstance for the victors. Perhaps the 
resolution to dissolve was rash, but it was, at all 
events, a noble indiscretion. Mr. Gladstone was 
assailed on all sides with the cry that he had not 
the confidence of the nation, and there were some 
grounds for believing that it was true. Within 
the last three years the Liberals again and again 
have sought to bring it home to Lord Beacons- 
field's conscience that he ought to sacrifice his 
enormous majority in Parliament and submit him- 
self to the country. It is true that in his case a 
policy had been entered upon which was not 
dreamed of when the present Parliament was 
elected, but the principle implied in the appeal 
to Lord Beaconsfield covers every case in which a 
Premier has reason to doubt whether he still re- 
tains the confidence of the country. Mr. Glad- 
stone scorned to tolerate a doubt on this point. 



166 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

He would rule with the assent and applause of 
the nation, or not at all ; and our opinion of his 
conduct depends upon whether party considera- 
tions are to be preferred to a nice sense of minis- 
terial honor." 

As soon as the national verdict was known, 
Mr. Gladstone sought the Queen at Windsor, and 
surrendered an office which for a year or more 
past had offered him little to compensate for its 
burdens. But even such leisure and retirement 
as release from the cares of office secured to him 
did not seem sufficient for his purposes at this 
juncture ; and, by a step which has been the most 
openly censured and the least successfully excused 
of any he has ever taken, Mr. Gladstone, just 
before the opening of the new Parliament, left 
the Liberal party practically without a leader. 

In one of the speeches delivered before his 
constituents during the campaign, he had inti- 
mated that, if the country decided upon the dis- 
missal of the Liberal Ministry, he should reserve 
to himself the right of limiting his future services 
to his party as he might think fit ; but the pre- 
cise significance of this was not fully understood 
until, on March 12th, he wrote the following 
letter to Lord Granville : 

" My deak Granville : I have issued a circular to 
members of Parliament of the Liberal party on the occa- 
tion of the opening of Parliamentary business. But I 
feel it to be necessary that, while discharging this duty, 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 167 

I should explain what a circular could not convey with 
regard to my individual position at the present time. 1 
need not apologize for addressing tbese explanations to 
you. Independently of other reasons for so troubling 
you, it is enough to observe that you have very long 
represented the Liberal party, and have also acted on 
behalf of the late Government, from its commencement 
to its close, in the House of Lords. 

" For a variety of reasons personal to myself, I could 
not contemplate any unlimited extension of active politi- 
cal service ; and I am anxious that it should be clearly 
understood by those friends with whom I have acted in 
the direction of affairs, that at my age I must reserve 
my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsi- 
bilities of leadership at no distant time. The need of 
rest will prevent me from giving more than occasional 
attendance in the House of Commons during the present 
session. 

•* I should be desirous, shortly before the commence- 
ment of the session of 1875, to consider whether there 
would be advantage in my placing my services for a time 
at the disposal of the Liberal party, or whether I should 
then claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto 
discharged. If, however, there should be reasonable 
ground for believing that, instead of the course which I 
have sketched, it would be preferable, in the view of the 
party generally, for me to assume at once the place of an 
independent member, I should willingly adopt the latter 
alternative. But I shall retain all that desire I have 
hitherto felt for the welfare of the party, and, if the 
gentlemen composing it should think fit either to choose 
a leader or make provision ad interim^ with a view to 
the convenience of the present year, the person desig- 



168 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

nated would, of course, command from me any assistance 
which he might find occasion to seek, and which it might 
be in my power to render." 

As a matter of course, the Liberal party had 
no alternative but to accept Mr. Gladstone's offer, 
and avail themselves of his services as long as 
possible ; and, accordingly, during the session of 
1874, he conscientiously performed the duties of 
leader of the Opposition. It was observed, how- 
ever, that, though he made important speeches on 
the bill for the Eegulation of Public Worship and 
on educational topics, he seldom entered upon 
Parliamentary questions with anything like his 
old spirit and vigor ; and few, perhaps, were sur- 
prised when, in January, 1875, he addressed a 
second letter to Lord Granville, announcing his 
resignation in decisive and unmistakable terms : 

"The time has, I think, arrived," he said, " when I 
ought to revert to the subject of the letter which I ad- 
dressed to you on March 12th. Before determining 
whether I should offer to assume a charge which might 
extend over a length of time, I have reviewed, with all 
the care in my power, a number of considerations, both 
public and private, of which a portion, and these not by 
any means insignificant, were not in existence at the date 
of that letter. The result has been that I see no public 
advantage in my continuing to act as the leader of the 
Liberal party ; and that, at the age of sixty-five, and after 
forty-two years of a laborious publio life, I think myself 
entitled to retire on the present opportunity. This retire- 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 169 

ment is dictated to me by my personal views as to the 
best method of spending the closing years of my life. I 
need hardly say that my conduct in Parliament will con- 
tinue to be governed by the principles on which I have 
heretofore acted ; and, whatever arrangements may be 
made for the treatment of general business, and for the 
advantage or convenience of the Liberal party, they will 
have my cordial support. I should, perhaps, add that I 
am at present, and mean for a short time to be, engaged 
on a special matter, which occupies me closely." 

" Such a resignation on the part of a great po- 
litical chief," says Mr. Smith, **was without pre- 
cedent ; but, while many lamented the step, none 
challenged the right of this eminent statesman to 
retire after forty-two years of active service. Even 
with a less brilliant catalogue of legislative achieve- 
ments than his, it was surely within his own le- 
gitimate province to say when the time had come 
for putting off the political armor, and yielding 
the command of the Liberal forces into other 
hands. At the same time, the announcement 
came with so great a surprise upon the country 
that for the moment it could scarcely be realized. 
That he who for a considerable period had been 
the life and soul of one of the two great political 
parties in the state should thus suddenly relinquish 
its control, carried something like consternation 
into the ranks of those who were anxiously look- 
ing for the consolidation of the Liberal party. 
Efforts were made to induce Mr. Gladstone to re- 



170 WILLIAM EWAKT GLADSTONE. 

consider his decision, but in vain ; and, in formally 
acknowledging the receipt of the ex-Premier's 
letter. Earl Granville wrote as follows : * I have 
communicated to you in detail the reasons which 
made me profoundly regret and deprecate the con- 
clusion at which you have arrived. Your late 
colleagues share these feelings to the fullest extent, 
and have regretted the failure of their endeavor to 
persuade you to come to a different decision. We 
have no doubt that the Liberal party, both in and 
out of Parliament, will feel as we do on the sub- 
ject. The observations we have addressed to you 
are prompted by considerations of public advan- 
tage for the future, and not merely by our sense 
of your great services, and our sentiments of per- 
sonal admiration and attachment.' 

" The daily and weekly press, both metropol- 
itan and provincial, were all but unanimous in 
their expressions of sympathy and regret, and in 
recognizing in Mr. Gladstone's retirement a loss 
to the nation. Many journals expressed a hope 
that the resignation was the result of a temporary 
depression, rather than of a lasting mood of 
mind ; and, while assuming that there would be 
many occasions when his mind would revert to 
Westminster, they trusted also that a sense of duty 
to the nation would bring him back at recurrent 
intervals to the scene of so many triumphs." 

His former colleagues and party associates vied 
with each other in the cordiality of their tributes 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 171 

to the retiring leader. Mr. Bright, addressing his 
constituents at Birmingham, said — in allusion to 
the few disparaging comments that had been made 
— *' I will say nothing in answer to the ungener- 
ous things that have been said and done. Of this 
I am well aware — that Mr. Gladstone, like an old 
and a noble Roman, can be content with deserving 
the praises of his country, even though some of 
his countrymen should deny them to him. " And 
Mr. Forster, in a speech delivered at the Bradford 
Chamber of Commerce, remarked that, although 
every one knew Mr. Gladstone's power and elo- 
quence, it was only those who had been brought 
into close personal contact with him who knew 
what an example he had set in the absolute sin- 
cerity, the absolute want of selfishness or self- 
seeking, in the principles and the manner in which 
he had conducted political life. " It is difficult," 
he said, *' for any one who has not been brought 
into close contact with him, and seen him under 
occasions of difficulty such as those in which a 
colleague has seen him — occasions, I must say, not 
only of difficulty, but even of temptation — it is 
difficult for any one who has not been in that po- 
sition thoroughly to realize what an example of 
purity, of self-sacrifice, and of disinterestedness 
he has set to politicians throughout the country, 
and to what an extent he, as far as he has acted, 
has raised the tone of political life. " 

Speaking of the practical outcome of the resig- 



172 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

nation, Mr. Lucy says : '* This was an arrangement 
not altogether hopeless, if Mr. Gladstone had car- 
ried out in the letter and in the spirit the intention 
of withdrawing from active participation in pol- 
itics, announced in his epistle to Earl Granville. 
But his temperament was not suited for the ex- 
hibition of silent yet not sullen endurance which 
he had extolled in the monuments of ancient Sicily. 
Even in the first session of the new Parliament he 
succeeded in introducing a disturbing feature in 
political warfare. Xo one knew exactly at what 
hour, or in respect of what political bill, he might 
not suddenly appear — as he did in respect of the 
Public Worship bill — and upset all calculation 
and all arrangement. This habit grew in inten- 
sity in the following session, and Mr. Gladstone 
came to be more terrible to his political friends 
than to the party opposite. It was all very well 
for the Liberals to meet in the smoke-room of the 
Reform Club, and elect Lord Hartinsfton leader, 
vice Mr. Gladstone retired from politics. It would 
have been Just as efficacious for the solar system 
to meet and elect the moon to rule by day, vice 
the sun resigned. Mr. Gladstone's erratic appear- 
ances in the political firmament were sufficient 
temporarily to dispose of the titular Leader of the 
Liberals, and to set the whole system once more 
revolving round himself." 

No sooner was he definitively released from the 
cares and responsibilities of political leadership 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. 173 

than Mr. Gladstone turned with zest to those 
literary activities which had only been in abey- 
ance ; and, as on a previous occasion, theology 
furnished him with a theme. Reverting, during 
the recess of 1874, to an ecclesiastical controversy 
which had been initiated some months before in 
the House of Commons (in a debate on the Pub- 
lic Worship bill), he published an article in the 
*' Contemporary Review," entitled '' What is Ritu- 
alism ? " in which he gave this general definition 
of Ritualism : " It is unwise, undisciplined reac- 
tion from poverty, from coldness, from barrenness, 
from nakedness ; it is overlaying purpose with ad- 
ventitious and obstructive incumbrance ; it is 
departure from measure and from harmony in the 
annexation of appearance to substance, of the out- 
ward to the inward ; it is the caricature of the 
beautiful ; it is the conversion of help into hin- 
drances ; it is the attempted substitution of the 
secondary for the primary aim, and the real failure 
and paralysis of both." 

This essay provoked many criticisms, to which, 
in the following year, Mr. Gladstone published a 
general reply, entitled **Is the Church of Eng- 
land Worth Preserving?" — a question which he 
answered in the affirmative. But the most im- 
portant outcome of the essay was an indirect one. 
In his first article was a passage which roused the 
indignation of the Roman Catholics to the high- 
est pitch ; and, in order to justify the assertions 



174 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

which it contained, Mr. Gladstone wrote a pam- 
phlet on '*The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing 
on Civil Allegiance : A Political Expostulation." 
The propositions which occasioned the pamphlet, 
and which he now defended, were as follows : 
^* I. That Rome has substituted for the proud 
boast of sernper eadem a policy of violence and 
change in faith. II. That she has refurbished 
and paraded anew every rusty tool she was fondly 
thought to have disused. III. That no one can 
now become her convert without renouncing his 
moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil 
loyalty and duty at the mercy of another. IV. 
That Rome has equally repudiated modern thought 
and ancient history." 

The pamphlet was a very able one, and it 
created an excitement and attained a success such 
as few pamphlets, or indeed works of any kind, 
have ever attained. Mr. Smith tells us that in 
the course of a few weeks no fewer than 120,000 
copies of it were sold ; and replies innumerable 
(including one from Dr. Newman) appeared, 
some endorsing its views and some endeavoring to 
confute them. Three months after the appear- 
ance of his first pamphlet, Mr. Gladstone issued 
a second, entitled ** Vaticanism : An Answer to 
Reproofs and Replies." In it he reiterated and 
fortified his original charges, and urged that 
** the Vatican Decrees do, in the strictest sense, 
establish for the Pope a supreme command over 



REACTION AND RETIREMENT. I75 

loyalty and civil duty." In addition to these dis- 
sertations on the subject of Vaticanism, Mr. Glad- 
stone contributed a vigorous and searching crit- 
icism upon the '^Speeches of Pope Pius IX" to 
the *^ Quarterly Review" for January, 1875. 

Religious controversy is, in general, perhaps, 
the most barren field in which an able man can 
exercise his intellect ; but Mr. Gladstone's Vatican 
pamphlets really did good service in making 
known the nature and possible political bearings 
of the Papal pretensions. Another good result 
which they accomplished was in demonstrating 
(by means of the controversy that arose over 
them) that there is a want of harmony among 
the members of the Romish Church themselves 
on the subject of the Vatican Decrees. Even 
Cardinal Newman — whom Mr. Gladstone de- 
scribes as "the first living theologian now within 
the Roman Catholic Communion " — interprets 
them in a way which can hardly be more satis- 
factory to the Ultramontanes than their deliber- 
ate rejection would be. 



176 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

XIV. 

THE EASTERN QUESTION?". 

Twice during Mr. Gladstone's career as a 
statesman, the Eastern Question — that *' skeleton 
in the closet of Europe," as it has been truly called 
— has come to the front, and seemed to call for im- 
mediate solution. The first time that it came up, 
Mr. Gladstone was a member of the Government, 
and was found defending ^^ British interests" by 
aiding the Turks against Russian aggression. The 
second time that it came up, he assailed Mr. 
Disraeli's Ministry with unexampled fierceness 
and persistency, because they seemed disposed to 
take the same view of " British interests " that had 
instigated and justified the Crimean War. For 
this apparent inconsistency, he has himself been 
bitterly and relentlessly criticised ; and his course 
in the later emergency has been ascribed to mere 
personal animosity toward Lord Beaconsfield. 
His own explanation is, that the two cases, in- 
stead of being identical, as is commonly assumed, 
were, in fact, completely contrasted with each 
other — Turkey being at the later period the **vi- 
olater of the public law of Europe," as Russia had 
been at the earlier period.* 

* For a more detailed account of Mr. Gladstone's 
defense, see the closing pages of the chapter on the 
Crimean War. 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 177 

In making this explanation, Mr. Gladstone is 
no doubt perfectly sincere, and his facts and ar- 
guments in support of it are not without cogency ; 
but the real truth probably is that, whereas at the 
time of the Crimean War the English Govern- 
ment and people were completely deceived as to 
the real nature and meaning of Turkish rule, the 
eyes of most of them had been opened before the 
next occasion for championing and supporting it 
had come round. Nor is it any discredit to a 
statesman that his opinions and policy should be 
changed by such revelations as the Turks made 
of themselves during 1875 and 1876. After all, 
a statesman is not exempt from the common ob- 
ligations and sentiments of humanity ; and to 
prefer the emancipation of an oppressed and suffer- 
ing people to a selfish conception of one's own na- 
tional interests is, to say the least, a generous and 
a noble trait. 

After the Crimean War the Eastern Question 
remained in a state of quiescence for twenty 
years, but it again became urgent when, in July, 

1875, an insurrection broke out in Herzegovina, 
where the oppression of the Christian peasantry 
by Mohammedan landlords, though long endured, 
had at length become intolerable. In January, 

1876, the insurgents gained a victory over the 
Turks ; and a few days later Count Andrassy, the 
Austrian Premier, drew up a Note containing a 
scheme of reforms in behalf of the Christian pop- 

12 



J78 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

nlations of Turkey, which, being communicated 
to the Porte by the Austrian, Eussian, and Ger- 
man ambassadors, was accepted by the Sultan's 
Government. This seemed to promise a peaceful 
solution of the difficulties ; but, early in May, 
another insurrection broke out in Bulgaria, and 
the Turks concluded that the time had come for 
applying their characteristic methods of dealing 
with such troubles. What these methods were 
was shown a few days later when the fearful 
tragedy of Batak sent a thrill of horror through- 
out Europe. Mr. Baring, the English consul,- 
has furnished us a vivid and authoritative account 
of this tragedy. On learning of the approach 
of the Turks, a large number of the people of 
Batak, probably about 1,000 or 1,200, took refuge 
in the church and churchyard. The church was a 
solid building, and resisted all attempts by the 
Bashi-Bazouks to burn it from the outside. They 
consequently fired into the windows, and, getting 
upon the roof, tore off the tiles, and threw pieces 
of burning wood and rags dipped in petroleum 
among the mass of unhappy human beings in- 
side. At last the door was forced in, the slaughter 
completed, and the inside of the church burned. 
Hardly any one — man, woman, or child — escaped 
out of the fatal walls ; and for weeks afterward 
the scene beggared description. The massacre at 
Batak was the most heinous crime that has 
stained the annals of the present century ; yet, for 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 179 

his services in perpetrating it, the Turkish leader, 
Achmet Agha, received from the Sultan the 
much-coveted Order of the Medjidie. Nor was 
this all. Mr. Baring, after careful investigation, 
estimated that no fewer than 12,000 persons had 
perished in the sandjak of Philippopolis. At 
least, sixty villages had been destroyed ; and a 
district once the most fertile in the empire had 
been reduced to a desert. At one place, forty 
young girls were shut up in a straw loft and 
burned ; and outrages of the most revolting de- 
scription were committed upon hundreds of un- 
fortunate captives. 

Before the news of these atrocities reached 
England, renewed efforts had been made to effect 
a peaceable adjustment. On the 11th of May, the 
Emperor of Russia, accompanied by Prince Gort- 
schakoff, arrived at Berlin, to confer with the 
Emperor "William, Prince Bismarck, and Count 
Andrassy, on the state of affairs ; and the out- 
come of this conference was the famous Berlin 
Memorandum, containing a programme of reforms 
which were to be urged upon Turkey by the 
united voice of Europe. England alone refused 
to sign this Memorandum, and shortly afterward 
the British fleet in the Mediterranean was ordered 
to Besika Bay — the effect of which was to break 
the European concert and encourage the Turks 
in their attitude of resistance. 

This occurred during the latter part of May, 



180 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

and early in June the revelations respecting the 
massacres in Bulgaria reached England, arousing 
a passionate indignation in the minds of every 
one, apparently, except Mr. Disraeli and his col- 
leagues. Mr. Disraeli expressed the belief that 
the outrages were exaggerated, and jocularly de- 
clared that, as to the torture of impalement 
(which had caused universal disgust and anger), 
he had only to remark that an Oriental people 
generally te^'minated their connection with cul- 
prits in a more expeditious manner ! It was in 
a debate on the policy of the Government that 
Mr. Disraeli made his last speech in the House 
of Commons (August 11, 1876). On the morn- 
ing after this speech, it was announced that he 
had been elevated to the peerage under the title 
of Earl of Beaconsfield. 

In the mean time events were hastening onward 
in Southeastern Europe. In June the Servians 
and Montenegrins had agreed to interfere in be- 
half of the insurrectionary Herzegovinians, and 
the former were engaged in a hopeless struggle 
against the concentrated might of the Turkish 
Empire. Russia was in the midst of a storm of 
popular excitement which was sure to lead to war, 
unless an end were put to the outrages upon the 
Christian subjects of the Porte ; and Mr. Glad- 
stone, deeming it high time that the voice of 
England also should be heard upon these in- 
famous deeds, published a pamphlet, entitled 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 181 

*' Bulgarian Horrors, and the Question of the 
East." In it he urged that England should aim 
at the accomplishment of three great objects, in 
addition to the termination of the war, viz., 1. 
To put a stop to the anarchical misrule, the 
plundering, the murdering, which still desolated 
Bulgaria. 2. To make effectual provision against 
the recurrence of the outrages recently per- 
petrated under the sanction of the Ottoman 
Government by excluding its administrative ac- 
tion for the future, not only from Bosnia and the 
Herzegovina, but also, and above all, from Bul- 
garia. 3. To redeem by such measures the honor 
of the British name, which in the deplorable events 
of the year had been more gravely compromised 
than he had known it to be at any former period. 
" Let us insist," he said, ^Hhat our Government, 
which has been working in one direction, shall 
work in the other, and shall apply all its vigor to 
concur with the other States of Europe in obtain- 
ing the extinction of the Turkish executive 
power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry 
away their abuses in the only possible manner, 
namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zap- 
tiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their 
Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, 
one and all, bag and baggage, sliall, I hope, clear 
out from the province they have desolated and 
profaned. ... If it be allowable that the execu- 
tive power of Turkey should renew at this great 



182 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

crisis, by permission or authority of Europe, the 
charter of its existence in Bulgaria, then there is 
not on record, since the beginnings of political 
society, a protest that man has lodged against in- 
tolerable misgovernment, or a stroke he has dealt 
at loathsome tyranny, that ought not hencefor- 
ward to be branded as a crime." 

The pamphlet was published in September, 
and a few days afterward Mr. Gladstone followed 
it up by a great speech to his constituents on 
Blackheath. He was received with immense en- 
thusiasm, and at various points in his address 
the audience were literally carried away by the 
strength of their emotions. Keferring to the 
massacre at Glencoe, the atrocities of Badajoz, 
the revolt of Cephalonia, and the more recent 
revolt in Jamaica, he said : ^*To compare these 
proceedings to what we are now dealing with is 
an insult to the common sense of Europe. They 
may constitute a dark page in British history, but, 
if you could concentrate the whole of that page, 
or every one of them, into a single point and a 
single spot, it would not be worthy to appear upon 
one of the pages that will hereafter consign to 
everlasting infamy the proceedings of the Turks 
in Bulgaria." With regard to the policy to be 
pursued, and the terms to be offered to the Turk, 
he would say to the latter : *' You shall receive a 
reasonable tribute ; you shall retain your titular 
sovereignty ; your empire shall not be invaded ; 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 183 

but never again while the years roll their course, 
so far as it is in our power to determine, never 
again shall the hand of violence be raised by you, 
never again shall the dire refinements of cruelty be 
devised by you for the sake of making mankind 
miserable in Bulgaria." Passing on to the ques- 
tion how this effectual prevention was to be secured, 
Mr. Gladstone said it could only be done with 
safety by the united action of the powers of 
Europe. The mind and the heart of Europe 
must be one in this matter. The assent of Russia, 
Germany, Austria, France, England, and Italy 
was not only important, but indispensable, to en- 
tire success and satisfaction. Yet there were two 
powers whose position was such that they stood 
forth far before the rest in authority, in the 
means of effectually applying that authority, and 
in responsibility upon this great question, viz., 
England and Russia. Enlarging still further upon 
this point, Mr. Gladstone observed : 

" I am far from supposing — I am not such a dreamer 
as to suppose — that Russia, more than any other country, 
is exempt from selfishness and ambition. But she has 
also within her, like other countries, the pulse of hu- 
manity, and, for my own part, I believe it is the pulse of 
humanity which is now throbbing almost ungovernably 
in her people. Upon the concord and hearty coopera- 
tion — not upon a mere hollow truce between England 
and Russia, but upon their concord and hearty cordial 
cooperation — depend a good settlement of this question. 



184 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Their power is immense. The power of Russia by land 
for acting upon these countries as against Turkey is per- 
fectly resistless ; the power of England by sea is scarcely 
less important at this moment. For, I ask you, what would 
be the condition of the Turkish armies if the British Ad- 
miral now in Besika Bay were to inform the Government 
of Constantinople that from that hour, until atonement 
had been made— until punishment had descended, until 
justice had been vindicated — not a man, nor a ship, nor 
a boat should cross the waters of the Bosphorus, or the 
cloudy Euxine, or the bright ^^Egean, to carry aid to the 
Turkish troops ? " 

This address drew forth a reply from Lord 
Beaconsfield, in the course of which he described 
the conduct of his opponents as worse than any 
Bulgarian atrocity ; and the agitation thus begun 
put a peremptory end to Mr. Gladstone's contem- 
plated retirement from politics. Though no 
longer the titular leader of the Opposition, the 
Government found in him a sleepless critic of 
every development of its Eastern policy, and both 
in and out of Parliament he threw himself into 
the conflict with passionate ardor and enthusiasm. 
No speeches that he ever made are so surcharged 
with feeling and intense fervor of conviction as 
the long series that he delivered against the foreign 
policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration. 

That policy had gradually revealed itself as 
one of opposition to Russia and '* moral support" 
of Turkey. On the 23d of December, 1876, a 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 185 

conference met at Constantinople (with Lord 
Salisbury representing England), and drew up a 
scheme of reform and guarantees, which was, in 
January, 1877, presented to the Porte as indicat- 
ing the views of Europe upon the demands of the 
situation. The scheme was a moderate one ; but 
the Ottoman Government, encouraged by the at- 
titude of England, rejected it as '* contrary to 
the integrity, independence, and dignity of the 
empire." 

Before the abortive result of the conference 
was known, a great public meeting, to discuss the 
Eastern Question, was held at St. James's Hall, 
London ; and Mr. Gladstone delivered an address, 
in the course of which he expressed the hope that 
the plenipotentiaries would insist on the future 
independence of the provinces, or, at least, upon 
such administrative autonomy as would insure 
them against arbitrary injustice and oppression. 
He declared this to be not only a worthy aim, but 
an absolute duty. "It is a case of positive obli- 
gation, and, under the stringent pressure of that 
obligation, I say that, if at length long-suffering 
and long-oppressed humanity in these provinces 
is lifting itself from the ground, and beginning 
again to contemplate the heavens, it is our busi- 
ness to assist the work. It is our business to ac- 
knowledge the obligation, to take part in the bur- 
den, and it is our privilege to claim for our country 
a share in the honor and in the fame. This ac- 



186 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

knowledgment of duty, this attempt to realize 
the honor, is what we at least shall endeavor to 
obtain from the Government ; and with nothing 
less than this shall we who are assembled here 
be, under any circumstances, persuaded to say 
'Content.'" In a speech delivered at this same 
meeting, Mr. Edward A. Freeman, the historian, 
said, referring to the doctrine of British interests, 
" Perish the interests of England, perish our do- 
minion in India, sooner than we should strike one 
blow or speak one word on behalf of wrong 
against right." And Mr. Carlyle, unable to at- 
tend, wrote a letter, in which he said : ^' The only 
clear advice I have to give is that the unspeakable 
Turk should be immediately struck out of the 
question, and the country left to honest European 
guidance, delaying which can be profitable or 
agreeable only to gamblers on the Stock Exchange, 
but distressing and unprofitable to all other men." 
On hearing of the "woeful failure" of the 
Constantinople Conference, Mr. Gladstone threw 
the responsibility for the situation upon the Gov- 
ernment, and continued to address great public 
meetings in opposition to Lord Beaconsfield's 
policy. For this course he was assailed, when 
Parliament met for the session of 1877, as *'an 
inflammatory agitator," and in defending himself 
said : '^ Such is the depth and strength of the 
sentiment which has taken possession of the mind 
and heart of England in reference to this question 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 187 

that I, in my poor and feeble person, have felt it 
almost impossible to avoid the manifestation of 
this almost nnexampled national and popular 
feeling." He concluded a wonderfully powerful 
and impressive speech with the following eloquent 
words : 

" We have, I think, the most solemn and the greatest 
question to determine that has come before Parliament 
in my time. It is only under very rare circumstances that 
such a question — the question of the East — can be fully 
raised, fully developed and exhibited, and fully brought 
home to the minds of men with that force, with that 
command, with that absorbing power, which it ought to 
exercise over them. In the original entrance of the 
Turks into Europe, it may be said to have been a turning- 
point in human history. To a great extent it continues 
to be the cardinal question, the question which casts into 
the shade every other question, and the question which 
is now brought before the mind of the country far more 
fully than at any period of our history, far more fully 
than even at the time of the Crimean War, when we were 
pouring forth our blood and treasure in what we thought 
to be the cause of justice and right. And I endeavored 
to impress upon the minds of my audience at Taunton, 
not a blind prejudice against this man or that, but a great 
watchfulness, and the duty of great activity. It is the 
duty of every man to feel that he is bound for himself, 
according to his opportunities, to examine what belongs 
to this question, with regard to which it can never be 
forgotten that we are those who set up the power of 
Turkey in 1854; that we are those who gave her the 
strength which has been exhibited in the Bulgarian mas- 



188 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

sacres; that we are those who made the treaty arrange- 
ments that have secured her for twenty years from almost 
a single hour of uneasiness brought about by foreign in- 
tervention ; and that, therefore, nothing can be greater 
and nothing deeper than our responsibility in the matter. 
It is incumbent upon us, one and all, that we do not allow 
any consideration, either of party or personal convenience, 
to prevent us from endeavoring to the best of our ability 
to discharge this great duty, that now, at length, in the 
East, has sprung up ; and that in the midst of this great 
opportunity, when all Europe has been called to collective 
action, and when something like European concert has 
been established — when we learn the deep human inter- 
ests that are involved in every stage of the question — 
as far as England at least is concerned, every Englishman 
should strive to the utmost of his might that justice shall 
be done." 

On the 24th of April, 1877, all efforts at adjust- 
ment having failed, Russia declared war against 
Turkey ; and on the 1st of May England, France, 
and Italy issued proclamations enjoining strict 
neutrality in the impending conflict. On the 7th 
of May Mr. Gladstone submitted to the House a 
series of resolutions, urging that **the influence 
of the British Crown may be addressed to the pro- 
moting the concert of the European Powers in ex- 
acting from the Ottoman Porte, by their united 
authority, such changes in the government of 
Turkey as they may deem to be necessary for the 
purposes of humanity and justice, for effectual 
defense against intrigue, and for the peace of the 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 189 

world." In his speech supporting the resolutions 
he gave a comprehensive survey of the whole ques- 
tion of the East, and toward the end asked wheth- 
er, with regard to the great battle of freedom 
against oppression then going on, the people of 
England could lay their hands upon their hearts, 
and in the face of God and man say, ^* We have 
well and sufficiently performed our part ? " Then 
came this noble peroration : 

*' Sir, there were other days when England was the 
hope of freedom. Wherever in the world a high aspira- 
tion was entertained or a noble blow was struck, it was 
to England that the eyes of the oppressed were always 
turned — to this favorite, this darling home of so much 
privilege and so much happiness, where the people that 
had built up a noble edifice for themselves would, it was 
well known, be ready to do what in them lay to secure 
the benefit of the same inestimable boon for others. You 
talk to me of the established tradition and policy in re- 
gard to Turkey. I appeal to an established tradition, 
older, wider, nobler far — a tradition not which disregards 
British interests, but which teaches you to seek the pro- 
motion of these interests in obeying the dictates of honor 
and justice. And, sir, what is to be the end of this ? Are 
we to dress up the fantastic ideas some people entertain 
about this policy and that policy in the garb of British 
interests, and then, with a new and base idolatry, fall 
down and worship them ? Or are we to look, not at the 
sentiment, but at the hard facts of the case which Lord 
Derby told us fifteen years ago — viz., that it is the popu- 
lations of those countries that will ultimately possess 



190 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

them — that will ultimately determine their abiding con- 
dition ? It is to this fact, this law, that we should look. 
There is now before the world a glorious prize. A por- 
tion of those unhappy people are still as yet making an 
effort to retrieve what they have lost so long, but have 
not ceased to love and to desire. I speak of those in 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another portion — a band of 
heroes such as the world has rarely seen — stand on the 
rocks of Montenegro, and are ready now, as they have 
ever been during the four hundred years of their exile 
from their fertile plains, to sweep down from their fast- 
nesses, and meet the Turks at any odds for the reestab- 
lishment of justice and of peace in those countries. 
Another portion still, the 5,000,000 of Bulgarians, cowed 
and beaten down to the ground, hardly venturing to look 
upward, even to their Father in Heaven, have extended 
their hands to you ; they have sent you their petition, 
they have prayed for your help and protection. They 
have told you that they do not seek alliance with Russia 
or with any foreign Power, but that they seek to be de- 
livered from an intolerable burden of woe and shame. 
That burden of woe and shame— the greatest that exists 
on God's earth — is one that we thought united Europe 
was about to remove, but to removing which, for the 
present, you seem to have no efficacious means of offering 
even the smallest practical contribution. But, sir, the 
removal of that load of woe and shame is a great and 
noble prize. It is a prize well worth competing for. It 
is not yet too late to try to win it. I believe there are 
men in the Cabinet who would try to win it if they were 
free to act on their own beliefs and aspirations. It is not 
yet too late, I say, to become competitors for that prize, 
but be assured that, whether you mean to claim for your- 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 191 

selves even a single leaf in that immortal chaplet of re- 
nown, which will be the reward of true labor in that 
cause, or whether you turn your backs upon that cause 
and upon your own duty, I believe for one that the knell 
of Turkish tyranny in these provinces has sounded. So 
far as human eye can judge, it is about to be destroyed. 
The destruction may not come in the way or by the 
means that we should choose ; but, come this boon from 
what hands it may, it will be a noble boon, and as a noble 
boon will gladly be accepted by Christendom and the 
world." 

In closing the debate, which lasted five days, 
Mr. Gladstone again said : 

" We are engaged in a continuous effort ; we roll the 
stone of Sisyphus against the slope, and the moment the 
hand shall be withdrawn, down it will begin to run. 
However, the time is short ; the sands of the hour-glass 
are running out. The longer you delay, the less in all 
likelihood you will be able to save from the wreck of the 
integrity and independence of the Turkish Empire. If Rus- 
sia should fail, her failure would be a disaster to mankind, 
and the condition of the suffering races, for whom we are 
supposed to have labored, will be worse than it was be- 
fore. If she succeeds, and if her conduct be honorable, 
nay, even if it be but tolerably prudent, the performance 
of the work she has in hand will, notwithstanding all 
your jealousies and all your reproaches, secure for her an 
undying fame. When that work shall be accomplished, 
though it be not in the way and by the means I would 
have chosen, as an Englishman I shall hide my head, but 
as a man I shall rejoice. Nevertheless, to my latest day 



192 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

I will exclaim, Would God that in this crisis the voice 
of the nation had been suffered to prevail ! Would God 
that in this great, this holy deed, England had not been 
refused her share ! " 

But neither argument nor eloquence could 
make any impression upon the compact phalanx 
of Lord Beaconsfield's supporters. The resolu- 
tions were rejected by a vote of 354 to 223. And 
all through the long contest the Government 
secured for its policy the support of similar Par- 
liamentary majorities. 

Meanwhile, the Russo-Turkish War had begun, 
and was carried forward to the result which is well 
known to all. By the end of 1877 — in spite of the 
bravery of Osman Pasha and the incompetence of 
the Russian generals — Turkey was prostrate before 
her conqueror, and on January 23, 1878, the 
Treaty of San Stefano was signed. 

A week afterward, on the 30th of January, 
Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech at Oxford, in 
which he strongly condemned the sending of the 
British fleet to the Dardanelles. He was afraid it 
would be found that it was a breach of European 
law. He had been accused of being an agitator, 
and with regard to the last eighteen months that 
might be said to be true. His purpose had been, 
to the best of his power, day and night, week by 
week, month by month, to counterwork what he 
believed to be the purposes of Lord Beaconsfield. 
It was in replying to this and other speeches of his 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 193 

rival that Lord Beaconsfield gave the celebrated 
description of Mr. Gladstone as '^a sophistical 
rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his 
own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imag- 
ination that can at all times command an inter- 
minable and inconsistent series of arguments to 
malign his opponents and to glorify himself." 

The Treaty of San Stefano, far from restoring 
the European concert, seemed likely for a time to 
kindle the flames of a general war. England re- 
garded it as oppressive, and demanded that it 
should be submitted for revision to a general 
congress of the Great Powers to assemble at Ber- 
lin ; and in this demand she was supported by 
Austria. Russia at first refused to submit the 
entire treaty, but, under a secret agreement with 
Lord Salisbury that its substantial results should 
not be disturbed, at length conceded the point. 
The Congress met on the 30th of June, the Eng- 
lish plenipotentiaries being the Earl of Beacons- 
field and the Marquis of Salisbury. One month 
later the Treaty of Berlin was signed ; and Lord 
Beaconsfield returned to England, bringing the 
phrase "peace with honor" and a secret Anglo- 
Turkish convention by which England obtained 
Cyprus as a military station and bound herself to 
defend the Turkish possessions in Asia from all 
further aggression. 

Shortly before the close of the session a great 
debate arose in the House of Commons, extending 
13 



194 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

over the wliole range of Eastern affairs and the 
recent treaties. In the course of his speech on 
the occasion, Mr. Gladstone said that, taking the 
whole of the provisions of the Berlin treaty- 
together, he thankfully and joyfully acknowledged 
that great results had been achieved in the dimi- 
nution of human misery, and toward the estab- 
lishment of human happiness and prosperity in 
the East. Yet he could not shut his eyes to the 
fact that the Sclavs, looking to Russia, had been 
freed ; while the Greeks, looking to England, re- 
mained with all their aspirations unsatisfied. 
Discussing the conduct of the British plenipoten- 
tiaries at the Congress, he found that, as a general 
rule, they took the side opposed to that of free- 
dom : 

"I say, sir, that in this Congress of the Great Powers 
the voice of England has not been heard in unison with 
the institutions, the history, and the character of Eng- 
land. On every question that arose and that became a 
subject of serious contest in the Congress, or that could 
lead to any important practical result, a voice had been 
heard from Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury which 
sounded in the tones of Metternich, and not in the tones 
of Mr, Canning, or of Lord Palmerston, or of Lord Rus- 
sell. I do not mean that the British Government ought 
to have gone to the Congress determined to insist upon 
the unqualified prevalence of what I may call British 
ideas. They were bound to act in consonance with the 
general views of Europe. But, within the limits of fair 
difference of opinion, which will always be found to 



THE EASTERN QUESTION. 195 

arise on such occasious, I do affirm that it was their part 
to take the side of liberty ; and I do also affirm that as a 
matter of fact they took the side of servitude." 

He also vigorously assailed the Anglo-Turkish 
Convention ; but his strongest attack upon that 
compact was in an address delivered to a meeting 
of Liberals in the Drill Hail, Bermondsey : 

"There is but one epithet which, I think, fully de- 
scribes a covenant of this kind. I think it is an insane 
covenant. I have known well the most eminent states- 
men of the last forty years. I have known them on both 
sides of politics, I was in my early life a follower of Sir 
Robert Peel and of the Duke of Wellington, and of Lord 
Aberdeen ; and, although I regret some things that I did, 
and have altered some opinions that I then held, yet, in 
point of honor and public duty, I am not in the least 
ashamed of any act of my public life. I do not think 
that the country ever had more honorable public ser- 
vants ; and, moreover, I will venture to say, particularly 
of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, that I have known 
under the name of Liberals men much less Liberal than 
they. But, gentlemen, what I wish to say is this, that, 
having known them on the other side — and having 
known well and worked with such men as Lord Russell, 
Lord Palmerston, Lord Lansdowne, and many more now 
called to their account — I do not believe that there is 
one of those — I am perfectly confident that there never 
was one of those — men who, under any circumstances, 
would have been induced to put his hand to such an ar- 
rangement as that which, to our shame, as I think now, 
has gone forth under the name of the Anglo- Turkish 
Convention." 



196 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Even stronger language followed, as Mr. Glad- 
stone described the course of the English Govern- 
ment upon the subject of the treaty : 



" It is perfectly well known that, if Russia is to attack 
India, which I for one believe to be a perfectly chimeri- 
cal idea, she must attack India through the heart of Asia, 
and that is not through Asia Minor — it is on the other 
side of the Caspian, on the other side of Persia, far away 
from Asia Minor, and our defending Turkey in Asia 
Minor against Russia has no imaginable connection with 
driving Russia off the road to India, so that the absurdity 
of the arrangement is gross ; but it has other qualities 
worse than its absurdity — its duplicity. I say that it has 
been a work of duplicity, and what I tell you here I hope 
to restate next week — that this is an act of duplicity of 
which every Englishman should be ashamed. Why, what 
have we been doing? Why has the country been kept 
in hot water since the Treaty of San Stefano was signed ? 
Because we insisted that no part of that treaty could be 
established without the consent of Europe, unless it af- 
fected the interior of the Turkish Empire, and we must 
have it brought before Europe. It was brought before 
Europe, accordingly, without reserve, and at that very 
time we ourselves, without the consei t of Europe, were 
framing a secret engagement with Turkey — which inter- 
fered at every point with the Treaty of San Stefano — an 
act of duplicity which, I am sure, has never been sur- 
passed, and, I believe, has rarely been equaled in the 
history of nations." 

"Mr. Gladstone's denunciations of the Gov- 
ernment,'* says Mr. Smith, *^have to some ap- 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF l879-'80. 197 

peared unmeasured and unwarrantable ; but those 
who thus judge him forget that, whether rightly 
or wrongly, his successors have traversed every 
political and financial principle to which he has 
steadfastly adhered through a public career extend- 
ing over nearly half a century. " Moreover, it may 
be said that they owe much of their polemical and 
personal character to the firm and settled con- 
viction of Mr. Gladstone that the policy of Lord 
Beaconsfield had been derogatory to the honor and 
interests of England at home and abroad. 



XV. 

THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN" OF 1879-'80. 

The electoral campaign which ended in the 
recent Conservative collapse may be fairly said to 
have begun with the great series of public speeches 
which Mr. Gladstone delivered during the agita- 
tion of the Eastern Question. These speeches 
were addressed to the people rather than to Par- 
liament, and there can hardly be a doubt now 
that he had the people with him from the very 
start. A straw, which might very well have been 
taken as showing the direction in which the cur- 
rent was flowing, was furnished in 1878, when 



198 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

Mr. Gladstone was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow 
University by a vote of 1,153 to 609 for Sir Staf- 
ord Northcote, Lord Beaconsfield having been bis 
predecessor in the office. 

But it was not only in their dealings with the 
Eastern Question that Lord Beaconsfield's Gov- 
ernment rendered themselves liable to Mr. Glad- 
stone's attack. Their foreign policy was all of a 
piece, and in Asia and Africa, as well as in Eu- 
rope, the effects were seen of an intermeddling, 
self -asserting, aggressive, and aggrandizing policy. 
The Treaty of Berlin had hardly dissipated the 
clouds that lowered upon the European horizon 
when a war was forced upon Afghanistan ; and it 
seemed as if Lord Beaconsfield, conscious that 
Russia had been triumphant in Europe, had con- 
ceived the fantastic project of checkmating and 
humiliating her in Asia. Then, as if a winter 
campaign in the passes of the Himalaya were not 
enough. Sir Bartle Frere provoked a war with the 
Zulus ; and, as a consequence of this, the one 
growing and progressive native state in South 
Africa was overthrown and disorganized. 

Both the Afghan war and the Zulu war were 
vigorously condemned by Mr. Gladstone ; and op 
these issues the Liberal party, which had been far 
from unanimous on the Eastern Question, once 
more drew together and presented a united front. 
In reference to Lord Beaconsfield's cynical ex- 
planation that the war against Afghanistan had 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF IS'/g-'SO. 199 

for its object a "scientific frontier," Mr. Glad- 
stone said ; 

" What right have we to annex by war or to menace 
the territory of our neighbors, in order to make * scien- 
tific' a frontier which is ah'eady safe? What should we 
say of such an act if done by another Power? Our 
frontier, we are told, causes anxiety to our viceroys. I 
ask, Which among the viceroys who have taken and 
quitted ofiice, and sometimes life, with so much honor, 
since we reached our northwestern frontier, have recom- 
mended such a rectification? Upon the whole, I must 
say that the great day of ' sense and truth,' instead 
of relaxing the reserve unhappily maintained, has added 
a new, and, to all appearance, a dangerous, mystery to 
those which before prevailed ; has left us more than ever 
at the mercy of anonymous paragraphs ; and is, so far, 
likely to increase rather than dispel the gloom which is 
settling on the country. That we are bound to observe 
and promote the observance of the Treaty of Berlin, there 
is no doubt. We should do it with better grace if we 
had not ourselves broken the Treaty of Paris, and vio- 
lated the honorable understanding under which the 
powers met in congress by the Anglo - Turkish Con- 
vention." 

The financial policy of the Government — in- 
timately connected as it was with its course 
on foreign affairs — was also energetically assailed 
by Mr. Gladstone. Sir Stafford Northcote's ex- 
chequer methods were exactly opposite to those 
of Mr. Gladstone at the tin\e of the Crimean War. 
Mr. Gladstone's method was, as far as possible, to 



200 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

make increased income meet increased expendi- 
ture ; Sir Stafford's method was to keep down 
current taxes while increasing the permanent ob- 
ligations of the country by borrowing — thus dis- 
guising the real cost of the so-called Imperial 
policy. 

A convenient summary of Mr. Gladstone's 
general indictment of the Beaconsfield Adminis- 
tration is to be found in a speech which he de- 
livered at Chester, on the 19th of August, 1879 : 

" I hold that the faith and honor of the country have 
been gravely compromised by the foreign policy of the 
Ministry; that, by the disturbance of confidence, and 
lately even of peace, wbich they have brought about, 
they have prolonged and aggravated public distress ; 
that they have augmented the power and interest of the 
Russian Empire, even while estranging the feelings of its 
population ; that they have embarked the Crown and 
people in an unjust war ; that their Afghan war is full 
of mischief, if not of positive danger, to India ; and that, 
by their use of the treaty - making and war - making 
powers of the Crown, they have abridged the just rights 
of Parliament, and have presented its prerogatives to the 
nation under an unconstitutional aspect, which tends to 
make it insecure." 

By the public discussion of these and similar 
topics, the popular mind was gradually being ** ed- 
ucated " for that decisive struggle at the polls 
which could not — on j^ccount of the limitation of 
the existence of a Parliament to seven years — be 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1879-'80. 201 

postponed beyond 1880. But the first formal 
opening of the campaign occurred toward the end 
of 1879, when Mr. Gladstone, having accepted 
the invitation of the Liberal electors of Mid- 
lothian to stand as their candidate, resolved to 
impeach the Ministry before the Scotch nation. 
Midlothian was one of the strongholds of Con- 
servatism, and Mr. Gladstone's opponent was the 
son of the local magnate, the Duke of Buccleugh ; 
but the great Liberal orator resolved to make trial 
of what could be accomplished by the voice of 
reason and of eloquence, and during the fortnight 
between November 24th and December 3d he 
made his preliminary canvass. 

Referring to this canvass, an author whom we 
have quoted before (Mr. Dunckley) says : "In the 
wonderful series of orations delivered in Mid- 
lothian we have a crowning instance of Mr. Glad- 
stone's intellectual vigor and force of character. 
As a mere feat of bodily and mental prowess it 
stands unrivaled. A winter's Journey to Scot- 
land and the delivery of one great speech might 
have been considered enough to task the energies 
of a man who the other day passed the Biblical 
limit of three score years and ten. But Mr. Glad- 
stone made several speeches on his way, slight skir- 
mishes prelusive to the campaign, and on reaching 
the enemy's territory, from a secure base of oper- 
ations at Dalmeny, he gave battle long and dire 
day after day for a week together, finishing up 



202 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

with a few sprightly flourishings as he gayly re- 
treated toward the hospitalities of Taymouth. It 
was a mere pastime then to write out his Lord 
Eector's address, and fling the sheets as fast as 
his pen glided over them to a literary aid-de- 
camp, who undertook to have them in type next 
day. In the academical prelection at Glasgow 
the political warrior figured in the equally fa- 
miliar character of a man of letters ; but before 
the day was over he had thrown off his robes, 
donned his armor, and was busily engaged in 
giving a few parting strokes to the enemy. On 
returning, as in going, he was waylaid at the 
principal stations, and while the train was get- 
ting ready the orator fired off his speech to ap- 
plauding thousands. Taken as a whole, the 
exhibition is astounding. It is like a revelation 
of one of Nature's hitherto unsuspected marvels. 
We try to think of heroes with Avhom to com- 
pare him, but find none. The * frame of adamant 
and soul of fire ' were ascribed to a man of 
si x-and- thirty, and Mr. Gladstone's achievement 
combines intellectual intrepidity with physical 
endurance. In this Midlothian campaign we have 
an illustration on the largest scale of that feature 
of his character which strikes us most, and the 
impression of which lasts longest with us. It is 
expressed in the word force, power in action." 

The popular enthusiasm aroused by Mr. Glad- 
stone everywhere that he went was a memorable 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1879-'80. 203 

display ; and when he had finished, it was found 
that a flood had swept over Scotland, and that 
the Canservative landmarks were all under water. 
Nor were indications wanting that the interest 
and enthusiasm were shared by the people of 
England also. Yet at this very time the club 
men of London and many metropolitan journals 
were fatuously declaring that Mr. Gladstone's 
" violence " had irretrievably damaged his cause, 
and were echoing Lord Beaconsfield's sneer about 
the exuberance of his verbosity. 

It was generally expected that Parliament 
would be dissolved during the recess, it being con- 
trary to usage for the House of Commons to sit 
for more than six sessions ; but when, at the open- 
ing of the session of 1880, the Ministry submitted 
a lengthy and comprehensive programme of work, 
the public settled down upon the conclusion that 
dissolution would be postponed until the autumn. 
An unexpected difficulty, however, was encount- 
ered in the unpopularity of a Water bill intro- 
duced by Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary. 
Rather than face the discredit of certain defeat 
on this measure the Conservative leaders deter- 
mined to dissolve Parliament at once. Nor were 
there wanting other inducements to this course. 
The state of Ireland was becoming daily more 
menacing ; the Conservative managers thought 
they had succeeded in fixing upon the Liberals 
the stigma of sympathy if not complicity with 



204 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the Home Rulers ; and several by-elections seem 
to show that the popular reaction against Mr. 
Gladstone's ** violence" had actually begun. 

The second week in March Lord Beaconsfield 
wrote a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, the 
Viceroy of Ireland, announcing that her Majesty 
had determined to '* revert to the sense of her 
people," defending the diplomacy whereby Eng- 
land had been enabled to maintain peace, '* which 
rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, 
of England in the Councils of Europe," and ex- 
pressing the fervent hope that the election would 
result in the return to Westminster of a Parlia- 
ment ** not unworthy of the power of England, 
and resolved to maintain it." On the 24th of 
March the official proclamation was issued, and a 
general election began, the results of which as- 
tonished the world, and none more than the Lib- 
erals themselves. 

The more sanguine Liberals had counted upon 
materially thinning the ranks of Lord Beacons- 
field's supporters, and the utmost that was even 
hoped was that a small majority might be se- 
cured ; but, as soon as the first returns began to 
come in, it was evident that a revolution had 
swept over the country, and that the Conservatives 
were smitten hip and thigh. An unprecedentedly 
large number of voters had gone to the polls ; and 
the new Parliament toward which Lord Beacons- 
field had looked with such '' fervent hope " re- 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1879-'80. 205 

turned to Westminster with a Liberal majority of 
114 (majority over Conservatives and Home Rulers 
combined, 52). 

Commenting upon this result, the " London 
Spectator" said: "It was Mr. Gladstone's first 
great campaign in Midlothian which rallied the 
whole of Scotland to his side, and awakened the 
popular mind in England. His second great cam- 
paign in Midlothian definitively brought the whole 
people of England to understand how big an issue 
there was before the country, and how much it 
concerned every Englishman who loves justice 
and liberty to cast in his lot with Scotland in re- 
lation to the judgment to be delivered. Nothing 
can be more marked than the way in which the 
English constituencies, stirred by Mr. Gladstone's 
voice, have answered his appeal. He spoke in 
Marylebone, where a Tory headed the poll at the 
last election ; all Marylebone was stirred to its 
depths, and two Liberals were returned, with two 
thousand votes to spare for the lower of the 
two. He spoke at Grantham, on his way to Scot- 
land ; and Grantham, where the representation 
was divided between a Liberal and a Conservative, 
has sent back two Liberals. He spoke at York ; 
and York, where the representation was divided, 
has sent back two Liberals. He spoke at New- 
castle ; and Newcastle, where the representation 
was divided, has sent back two Liberals. He 
spoke at Berwick ; and Berwick, where the rep- 



206 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

resentation was divided, has returned two Liber- 
als. So that not only in Scotland, where no one 
doubted the ascendancy of Mr. Gladstone's political 
convictions, but wherever he has been in popular 
contact with the English constituencies, the re- 
sult has been equally decisive. We take it that 
we shall hear no more of the misfortunes which 
the Liberal party are to suffer as the result of 
Mr. Gladstone's 'exuberant verbosity.' As Sir 
W. Harcourt has very justly said, it is what Lord 
Beaconsfield termed Mr. Gladstone's * exuberant 
verbosity ' which has overthrown Lord Beacons- 
field. The extraordinary vote which the constit- 
uencies have given, a vote which, even in its Con- 
servative element has increased on the former 
vote by twelve per cent., and in its Liberal ele- 
ments by thirty-nine per cent., is one due almost 
exclusively, we believe, to the effect which Mr. 
Gladstone's campaign has had in impressing on 
the whole country the great political stake at 
issue. It is Mr. Gladstone's voice which has 
roused the country, and Mr. Gladstone's convic- 
tion which has carried it. Like Achilles, when 
he left his tent, his mere cry scared the victors, 
as they then thought themselves, in the full heat 
of their assault. Like Achilles, when he entered 
the battle, everything has gone down before him, 
or rather, everything has seemed to ally itself 
with him and his cause." A confirmation of this 
is afforded by the fact that at all the election 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1879-'80. 207 

speeches during the entire contest every mention 
of Mr. Gladstone's name "was received with vo- 
ciferous and enthusiastic cheering." 

The significance of these facts was seen in 
the events which immediately followed. Lord 
Beaconsfield, bowing gracefully to the national 
verdict of dismissal, did not wait for the meet- 
ing of Parliament, but resigned office at once. 
In accordance with usage the Queen then sent for 
Lord Hartington, the titular leader of the Lib- 
eral party ; but both Lord Hartington and Lord 
Granville assured her Majesty that under the 
circumstances there was no possible Prime Minis- 
ter but Mr. Gladstone. Yielding reluctantly to 
the logic of events — for it is understood that Mr. 
Gladstone is far from popular at court — the Queen 
finally sent for Mr. Gladstone, and the Great 
Commoner of our day has again become Premier 
under circumstances which make him as nearly a 
dictator as English constitutional usage will allow. 

Thus striking and dramatic were the personal 
consequences of the election. In regard to its 
more intimate significance and more far-reaching 
effects, we may quote two widely different com- 
mendations. An "Eastern Statesman," writing 
in the "Contemporary Review," says: "Other 
oppressors of mankind have clothed their doings 
under some decent pretexts. If we read the trea- 
ties and state papers with which, as Gibbon and 
Sismondi have taught us, kings and ministers 



208 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

have striven to deceive mankind, it is wonderful 
to see what exalted motives are professed for the 
very ugliest of doings. But the Government of 
Lord Beaconsfield were above this kind of thing. 
They saw no need to assume a virtue, to pay hom- 
age to virtue ; they boldly professed that inter- 
est, and not right, was their only standard. At 
the late election the intellectual sense of the na- 
tion declared that the so-called British interests 
were no British interests at all ; its moral sense 
declared that, if they were British interests, still 
British interests were not to be set before British 
duties and British honor. The victory, then, of 
the elections is preeminently a moral victory, a 
triumph of right over wrong. He who says this 
must of course expect to be scoffed at, whether 
by those who do not believe that there is any 
right or wrong at all, or by those who do not be- 
lieve that a nation, as such, can be guided by the 
rules of right and wrong. Yet experience shows 
that the instincts of a people are most commonly 
right, and that, when a people goes astray, it is 
commonly from not having the right and wrong 
of the case fully set before it. The popular sym- 
pathy for the Turk in 1854 was not an unright- 
eous or ungenerous feeling ; it was simply a mis- 
guided feeling, based on a thoroughly wrong con- 
ception of the facts. This time the people have 
had the facts set before them with all truth and 
all clearness ; and they have judged accordingly. 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OP 1879-'80. 209 

Generally, then, the election is a victory of good 
over evil." 

And a writer in the New York " Nation " 
more finely says : ^' There is one great feature 
about the election which may almost be called 
pathetic. The area of the globe over which the 
result was looked for with eager anxiety was, of 
course, very great, and illustrates strikingly the 
vastness of the Empire. But what gives a touch 
of splendor to the Liberal victory is that whole 
races in the East have seen it as a great light. 
To every Christian still groaning under Turkish 
rule it means speedy help and deliverance. To 
the Christians lately emancipated and to the 
Greeks it means the consolidation and mainte- 
nance of their freedom and independence. To the 
Hindus it means government for their own sake, 
and not for the gratification of foreign pride. 
For the Afghans it means a cessation of pillage 
and slaughter in aid of a ' scientific frontier.' 
To the Turk it means that he must be clean and 
honest and industrious, or die. These things 
must sweeten their triumph to the English Lib- 
erals, and would make it precious even if they 
did not know that it had probably put an end to 
the last effort that will ever be made on English 
soil to set up personal government and restore 
the mystery of statecraft." 

In this, his second premiership, Mr. Gladstone 
faced many difficulties and much adverse criti- 
14 



210 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

cism. Troubles in Egypt, in South Africa, and 
in Ireland required instant attention, and his 
convictions regarding the province of Imperial 
governments cost him many friends. The Con- 
servatives had annexed the Transvaal. Sir The- 
ophilus Shepstone, sent out to investigate con- 
ditions, mistook the attitude of a few Boers for a 
national sentiment and raised the British flag. 
The Boers rose in revolt and defeated the British 
soldiers. When Mr. Gladstone came into power 
he denounced the Conservative's action as unjust 
and sent out the able general, Sir Evelyn Wood, 
to make terms of honorable peace. The Trans- 
vaal Kepublic was restored, and a British protec- 
torate against foreign nations established. Jin- 
goism cried out loudly against this policy, and 
demanded that British honor be vindicated by 
at least one decisive victory. His political op- 
ponents have even held Mr. Gladstone responsi- 
ble for the Boer War of 1899. Mr. Gladstone con- 
tended always that the highest Imperial policy 
must be to consult rather than coerce the nations 
governed. 

When the Franchise Bill of 1885 provided an 
almost universal suffrage, and proved conclusively 
the popularity of the Home Rule policy in Ire- 
land, Mr. Gladstone, true to his convictions, 
became a convert. In his third premiership, in 
March, 1886, he introduced a bill for the estab- 
lishment of an Irish parliament. A period of 



THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1879-'80. 211 

wild agitation followed. Mr. Chamberlain and 
Lord Hartington (afterwards Duke of Devon- 
shire) deserted Mr. Gladstone, became leaders 
of a new party, the Liberal Unionists, and the 
government was defeated. Mr. Gladstone then 
led the Opposition, and for six years fought the 
Conservative coercive policy in Ireland. When 
in 1892 he was returned to power for the fourth 
time, he presented an Irish Home Rule Bill in 
which the most objectionable features of his first 
bill were eradicated. This time Irish represen- 
tation at Westminster as well as at Dublin was 
provided for ; the members at Westminster were 
to vote only upon questions of national interest, 
and Irish affairs were to be dealt with in the 
home parliament. This bill passed the Com- 
mons by a majority of 34, but was rejected in 
the House of Lords by a vote of 419 to 41. 

In 1894, on account of failing eyesight, Mr. 
Gladstone resigned the Premiership, and in his 
last speech pointed out the danger of the ob- 
structive power of the Upper House. The next 
four years were spent mostly at Hawarden Castle, 
and on May 19, 1898, he died there. The honor 
of a national funeral was granted him — perhaps 
the most simple and dignified of all England's 
state funerals, and he was buried in Westminster 
Abbey. 



212 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONifi. 

XVI. 

QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 

A NUMBER of the most famous and character- 
istic specimens of Mr. Gladstone's eloquence have 
been introduced at various points in the preceding 
narrative ; in the present chapter we shall attempt 
to indicate and illustrate his position and qualities 
as an orator. " Among living competitors for 
the oratorical crown," says Mr. A. Hay ward, in 
one of his ** Essays," " the first place will be con- 
ceded without a dissenting voice to Mr. Gladstone. 
An excellent judge, a frequent opponent of his 
policy, whom we consulted, declared that it was 
Eclipse first and all the rest nowhere. He may 
lack Mr. Bright's impressive diction, impressive 
by its simplicity, or Mr. Disraeli's humor and 
sarcasm ; but he has made ten eminently success- 
ful speeches to Mr. Bright's or Mr. Disraeli's one. 
His foot is ever in the stirrup ; his lance is ever 
in the rest. He throws down the gauntlet to all 
comers. Right or wrong, he is always real, natu- 
ral, earnest, unaffected, and unforced. He is a 
great debater, a great Parliamentary speaker ; 
with a shade more imagination, he would be a 
great orator." 

Mr. Justin McCarthv demurs somewhat to 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 213 

this verdict, but bears cordial testimony to Mr. 
Gladstone's wonderful powers. He says : "A 
distinguished critic once pronounced Mr. Glad- 
stone to be the greatest Parliamentary orator of 
our time, on the ground that he had made by far 
the greatest number of fine speeches, while ad- 
mitting that two or three speeches had been made 
by other men of the day which might rank higher 
than any of his. This is, however, a principle of 
criticism which posterity never sanctions. The 
greatest speech, the greatest poem, give the author 
the highest place, though the effort were but 
single. Shakespeare would rank beyond Massinger 
just as he does now had he written only 'The 
Tempest.' We can not say how many novels, 
each as good as * Gil Bias,' would make Le Sage 
the equal of Cervantes. On this point fame is 
inexorable. We are not, therefore, inclined to 
call Mr. Gladstone the greatest English orator of 
our time when we remember some of the finest 
speeches of Mr. Bright ; but did we regard Parlia- 
mentary speaking as a mere instrument of Parlia- 
mentary business and debate, then unquestionably 
Mr. Gladstone is not only the greatest, but by far 
the greatest, English orator of our time ; for he 
had a richer combination of gifts than any other 
man we can remember, and he could use them 
oftenest with effect. He was like a racer which 
can not, indeed, always go faster than every rival, 
but can win more races in the year than any other 



214 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

horse. Mr. Gladstone could get up at any mo- 
ment, and no matter how many times a night, 
in the House of Commons, and he argumentative 
or indignant, pour out a stream of impassioned 
eloquence or a shower of figures, just as the ex- 
igency of the debate and the moment required. 
He was not, of course, always equal ; but he was 
always eloquent and effective. He seemed as if 
he could not be anything but eloquent. Perhaps, 
judged in this way, he never had an equal in the 
English Parliament. Neither Pitt nor Fox ever 
made so many speeches combining so many great 
qualities. Chatham was a great actor rather than 
a great orator. Burke was the greatest political 
essayist who ever addressed the House of Com- 
mons. Canning did not often rise above the 
level of burnished rhetorical commonplace. Ma- 
caulay, who during his time drew the most 
crowded houses of any speaker, not even except- 
ing Peel, was not an orator in the true sense. 
Probably no one, past or present, had in com- 
bination so many gifts of voice, manner, fluency, 
and argument, style, reason, and passion as Mr. 
Gladstone." 

That first qualification of an orator — voice — 
Mr. Gladstone possesses in perfection. One who 
has heard him often says : ** As for his voice, it 
is like a silver clarion. And the charm of that 
harmonious voice is — that, after the delivery of a 
speech of four or five hours in its duration, and 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 215 

(teste Hansard ! ) there have been such speeches, 
the closing words of the peroration will ring as 
clear as a bell upon the ear, without the faintest 
perceptible indication, to the last, of anything 
like physical exhaustion." And Mr. McCarthy 
says : " Such a voice would make commonplace 
seem interesting and lend something of fascina- 
tion to dullness itself. It was singularly pure, 
clear, resonant, and sweet. The orator never 
seemed to use the slightest effort or strain in fill- 
ing any hall and reaching the ear of the farthest 
among the audience. It was not a loud voice 
or of great volume ; but strong, vibrating, and 
silvery. The words were always aided by ener- 
getic action and by the deep gleaming eyes of the 
orator. Somebody once said that Gladstone was 
the only man in the House who could talk in 
italics. The saying was odd, but was neverthe- 
less appropriate and expressive. Gladstone could 
by the slightest modulation of his voice give all 
the emphasis of italics, of small print, or large 
print, or any other effect he might desire, to his 
spoken words. It is not to be denied that his 
wonderful gift of words sometimes led him astray. 
It was often such a fluency as that of a torrent on 
which the orator was carried away. Gladstone 
had to pay for his fluency by being too fluent. 
He could seldom resist the temptation to shower 
too many words on his subject and his hearers. 
Sometimes he involved his sentence in paren- 



216 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

thesis within parenthesis until the ordinary lis- 
tener began to think extrication an impossibil- 
ity ; but the orator never failed to unravel all the 
entanglements, and to bring the passage out to 
a clear and legitimate conclusion. There was 
never any halt or incoherency, nor did the joints 
of the sentence fail to fit together in the right 
way. Harley once described a famous speech as 
^a circumgyration of incoherent words.' This 
description certainly could not be applied even to 
Mr. Gladstone's most involved passages ; but if 
some of those were described as a circumgyration 
of coherent words, the phrase might be consid- 
ered germane to the matter. His style was com- 
monly too redundant. It seemed as if it belonged 
to a certain school of exuberant Italian rhetoric. 
Yet it was hardly to be called florid. Gladstone 
indulged in few flowers of rhetoric, and his great 
gift was not imagination. His fault was simply 
the habitual use of too many words. This defect 
was indeed a characteristic of the Peelite school 
of eloquence. Mr. Gladstone retained some of the 
defects of the school in which he had been trained, 
even after he had come to surpass its greatest 
master. 

** Often, however, this superb, exuberant rush 
of words added indescribable strength to the 
eloquence of the speaker. In passages of indig- 
nant remonstrance or denunciation, when word 
followed word, and stroke came down upon stroke. 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 217 

with a wealth of resource that seemed inexhausti- 
ble, the very fluency and variety of the speaker 
overwhelmed his audience. Interruption only gave 
him a new stimulus, and appeared to supply him 
with fresh resources of argument and illustration. 
His retorts leaped to his lips. His eye caught 
sometimes even the mere gesture that indicated 
dissent or question ; and perhaps some unlucky 
opponent, who was only thinking of what might 
be said in opposition to the great orator, found 
himself suddenly dragged into the conflict and 
overwhelmed with a torrent of remonstrance, 
argument, and scornful words. Gladstone had 
not much humor of the playful kind, but he 
had a certain force of sarcastic and scornful 
rhetoric. He was always terribly in earnest. 
Whether the subject were great or small, he 
threw his whole soul into it. Once, in address- 
ing a school-boy gathering, he told his young 
listeners that if a boy ran he ought always to run 
as fast as he could ; if he jumped, he ought al- 
ways to jump as far as he could. He illustrated 
his maxim in his own career. He had no idea 
apparently of running or jumping in such measure 
as happened to please the fancy of the moment. 
He always exercised his splendid powers to the 
uttermost strain." 

Of Mr. Gladstone's appearance and manner in 
speaking, Mr. Lucy — after quoting the description 
of the young man eloquent which we have our- 



218 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

selves reproduced in its proper connection * — gives 
the following animated picture : 

" It is curious to note that some of these man- 
nerisms of forty years ago are preserved hy the 
great statesman we know to-day. It is particu- 
larly notable that to this day, when Mr. Gladstone 
rises and begins what is intended to be a great 
oration, he has a tendency to clasp his hands be- 
hind his back. This attitude, however, like the 
subdued mood of which it is an indication, pre- 
vails only during the opening sentences. Age has 
fired rather than dulled his oratorical energy. He 
has even, during the existence of the present Par- 
liament, increased in rapidity of gesture almost to 
the point of fury. The jet-black hair of forty 
years ago has faded and fallen, leaving only a few 
thin wisps of gray carefully disposed over the 
grandly formed head with which, as he told a 
Scotch deputation the other day, London hatters 
have had such trouble. The rounded cheeks are 
sunken, and their bloom has given place to pallor ; 
the full brow is wrinkled ; the dark eyes, bright 
and flashing still, are underset with innumerable 
wrinkles ; the ' good figure ' is somewhat rounded 
at the shoulders ; and the sprightly step is growing 
deliberate. But the intellectual fire of forty years 
ago is rather quickened than quenched, and the 
promise of health has been abundantly fulfilled 
in a maintenance of physical strength and activity 

* See page 36. 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 219 

that seems phenomenal. Mr. Gladstone will out- 
sit the youngest member of the House if the issue 
at stake claims his vote in the pending division. 
He can speak for three hours at a stretch, and he 
will put in the three hours as much mental and 
physical energy as, judiciously distributed, would 
suffice for the whole debate. His magnificent 
voice is as true in tone and as insensible to fatigue 
as when it was first heard within the walls of the 
House. By comparison he is far more emphatic 
in gesture when addressing the House of Com- 
mons than when standing before a public meeting. 
This, doubtless, is explicable by the fact that, while 
in the one case he is free from contradiction, in 
the other he is, more particularly during a period 
of Tory ascendancy, outrageously subject to it. 
Trembling through every nerve with intensity of 
conviction and the wrath of battle, he almost liter- 
ally smites his opponent hip and thigh. Taking 
the brass-bound box upon the table as representa- 
tive of * the right honorable gentleman ' or * the 
noble lord ' opposite, he will beat it violently with 
his right hand, creating a resounding noise that 
sometimes makes it difficult to catch the words he 
desires to emphasize. Or, standing with heels 
closely pressed together, and feet spread out fan- 
wise, so that he may turn as on a pivot to watch 
the effect of his speech on either side of the House, 
he will assume that the palm of his left hand is 
his adversary of the moment, and straightway he 



220 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

beats upon it with his right hand with a ferocity 
that causes to curdle the blood of the occupants 
of the Ladies' Gallery. At this stage will be noted 
the most marked retention of early House of Com- 
mons habit, in the way in which the orator con- 
tinually turns round to address his own followers, 
to the outraging of a fundamental point of etiquette 
which requires that all speech should be directed 
to the Chair." 

Another observer, writing some years ago in 
the ** Gentleman's Magazine," says : "Mr. Glad- 
stone's oratorical manner is much more strongly 
marked by action than is Mr. Bright's. He em- 
phasizes by smiting his right hand in the open 
palm of his left ; by pointing his finger straight 
out at his adversary, real or representative ; and, 
in his hottest moments, by beating the table with 
his clenched hand. Sometimes in answer to cheers 
he turns right round to his immediate supporters 
on the benches behind him, and speaks directly to 
them ; whereupon the Conservatives, who hugely 
enjoy a baiting of the emotional ex-Premier, call 
out * Order ! order ! ' This call seldom fails in 
the desired effect of exciting the right honorable 
gentleman's irascibility, and when he loses his 
temper his opponents may well be glad. Mr. 
Bright always writes out the peroration of his 
speeches, and at one time was accustomed to 
send the slip of paper to the reporters. Mr. 
Disraeli sometimes writes out the whole of his 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 221 

speeches. The one he delivered to the Glas- 
glow students in "N'ovember, 1873, was in type in 
the office of a London newspaper at the moment 
the right honorable gentleman was speaking at 
the university. Mr. Gladstone never writes a 
line of his speeches, and some of his most suc- 
cessful ones have been made in the heat of de- 
bate, and necessarily without preparation. His 
speech in winding up the debate on the Irish 
University bill has rarely been excelled for close 
reasoning, brilliant illustration, and powerful elo- 
quence ; yet if it be referred to it will be seen 
that it is for the greatest and best part a reply to 
the speech of Mr. Disraeli, who had just sat down, 
yielding the floor to his rival half an hour after 
midnight. 

^* Evidence of the same swift reviewing of a 
position, and of the existence of the same power 
of instantly marshaling arguments and illus- 
trations, and sending them forth clad in a pano- 
ply of eloquence, is apparent in Mr. Gladstone's 
speech when commenting on Mr. Disraeli's an- 
nouncement of the withdrawal of the main por- 
tion of the Endowed Schools Act Amendment bill. 
The announcement, and especially the manner in 
which it was made, was a surjDrise that almost 
stunned and momentarily bewildered the House 
of Commons. Mr. Gladstone was bound to speak, 
and to speak the moment Mr. Disraeli resumed 
his seat. He had no opportunity to take counsel. 



222 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

and no time to make preparations for his speech ; 
but the result of his masterly oration at this crisis 
was that the unpopularity and dissatisfaction 
created by the course he had taken in the matter 
of the Regulation of Public Worship bill melted 
like snow in the firelight, and the conviction was 
borne in upon his discontented followers that, as 
long as Mr. Gladstone lived and chose to hold 
the office, there was no other leader possible for 
the Liberal party." 

"As a debater," says Mr. T. Wemyss Reid 
(in his "Cabinet Portraits"), "he [Mr. Glad- 
stone] stands without a rival in the House of 
Commons. Mr. Disraeli possesses a brilliant wit 
and power of sarcasm to which he can lay no 
claim ; but no one who has seen Mr. Gladstone 
take his part in a great party battle will question 
his superiority as a debater to any of his rivals 
or colleagues. He is never seen to so much ad- 
vantage as when, at the close of a long discussion, 
he rises in the midst of a crowded House impa- 
tient for the division to reply to Mr. Disraeli or 
Mr. Hardy. The readiness with which he re- 
plies to a speech just delivered is amazing. He 
will take up, one after another, the arguments of 
his opponent, and examine them and debate them 
with as much precision and fluency as though he 
had spent weeks in the preparation of his answer. 
Then, too, at such moments time is precious, 
and he is compelled to repress that tendency to 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 223 

prolixity which is one of his greatest faults as 
an orator. His sentences, instead of wandering 
on interminably, are short and clear, and from 
beginning to end of the speech there is hardly a 
word which seems unnecessary. 

"The excitement, too, which prevails around 
him always infects him strongly ; his pale face 
twitches, his magnificent voice quivers, his body 
sways from side to side as he pours forth argu- 
ment, pleading, and invective, strangely inter- 
mingled. The storm of cheers and counter- 
cheers rages around him, as it can rage nowhere 
except in the House of Commons on such an 
occasion, but high and clear above the tumult 
rings out his voice, like the trumpet sounding 
through the din of the battle-field. As he draws 
to a close something like a calm conies over the 
scene, and upon both sides men listen eagerly to 
his words, anxious to catch each sentence of his 
peroration, always delivered with an artistic care 
which only one other member of Parliament can 
equal, and seldom failing to impress the House 
with its beauty. Then it is that his great powers 
are seen to the fullest advantage — voice and ac- 
cent and gesture all giving force and life to the 
words which he utters. 

"And having upon such an occasion seen him 
in the most favorable light, let the reader go into 
the House of Commons during the * question 
hour,' set apart for the torture of ministers, if he 



224 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

wishes to see how very different an appearance 
he can make under other circumstances. The 
art of answering questions is by no means to be 
despised by a Cabinet Minister ; but of all the 
great ministers we have had in recent times, Mr. 
Gladstone has the least knowledge of that art. 
His great fault is that he does not know when to 
stop. Having, in reply to some troublesome ques- 
tioner, made what seems to be an explicit declara- 
tion of his intentions, instead of sitting down, as 
Mr. Disraeli would do under similar circum- 
stances, he proceeds forthwith to explain, at in- 
terminable length, the alternative courses open 
to him, the reasons why none of those courses was 
suitable, and the arguments in favor of that which 
he has decided to adopt. On and still on he goes, 
with an unbroken fluency, and with a commar ^ 
of language which is marvelous, until a shade of 
weariness steals over the faces of his colleagues 
on the Treasury Bench, and honorable gentlemen 
opposite unceremoniously show that they have 
heard enough by entering into a brisk conversa- 
tion with each other." 

This tendency to undue copiousness was amus- 
ingly illustrated by Mr. Shirley Brooks in an 
article which he contributed to the '* Quarterly 
Review " in 1854. Speaking of Mr. Gladstone's 
mode of answering questions, Mr. Brooks says ; 
** He points his finger, as one who is not going to 
let you off until you quite understand the subject. 



QUALITIES AS AN ORATOR. 225 

and then he explains it to you at such length, and 
with such a copia verhorum, that you feel quite 
ashamed of the unreasonable trouble you have 
given to a man who has so much else to attend 
to. . . . His answers contrast a good deal with 
those of Lord Palmerston. Supposing each states- 
man to be asked what day the session would be 
over, the Viscount would reply that it was the in- 
tention of her Majesty to close the session on the 
18tli of August. Mr. Gladstone would possibly 
premise that, inasmuch as it was for her Majesty 
to decide upon the day which would be acceptable 
to herself, it was scarcely compatible with Parlia- 
mentary etiquette to ask the Minister to anticipate 
such a decision ; but, presuming that he quite 
understood the purport of the right honorable 
gentleman's question, of which he was not entirely 
assured, the completion of the duties of the House 
of Commons, and the formal termination of the 
sittings of the Legislature, were two distinct things. 
He would say that her Majesty's Minister had rep- 
resented to the Queen that the former would prob- 
ably be accomplished about the 18th of August, 
and that such day would not be unfavorable for 
the latter ; and, therefore, if the Sovereign should 
be pleased to ratify that view of the case, the day 
he had named would be probably that inquired 
after by the right honorable gentleman. " 

Mr. Hayward also refers to this characteristic, 
but in a more genial spirit. " Mr. Gladstone," 
15 



226 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

he says, " is more Ciceronian than Demosthenic. 
Amplification, not condensation, is his forte ; but 
he can be fanciful or pithy on occasion ; as when, 
in a budget speech, he compared his arrival at the 
part in which the remissions of taxation were to 
be announced, to the descent into the smiling 
valleys of Italy after a toilful ascent of the Alps ; 
or when he said that it was the duty of the Minis- 
ter to stand ' like a wall of adamant ' between the 
people and the Crown. His graceful reply to Mr. 
Chaplin will compensate for many a hasty reproof 
administered to assailants whom he had better 
have left unnoticed : 

" ' The honorable member who has just sat down has 
admonished us, and myself in particular, that the sense of 
justice is apt to grow dull under the influence of a long 
Parliamentary experience. But there is one sentiment 
which I can assure him does not grow dull under the in- 
fluence of a long Parliamentary experience, and that is 
the sense of pleasure when I hear — whether upon these 
benches or upon those opposite to me — an able, and at 
the same time frank, ingenuous, and manly statement of 
opinion, and one of such a character as to show me that 
the man who makes it is a real addition to the intellectual 
and moral worth and strength of Parliament. Having 
said this, I express my thanks to the honorable member 
for having sharply challenged us. It is right that we 
should be so challenged, and we do not shrink from it.' " 



QUALITIES AS A PARTY LEADER. 227 

XVII. 

QUALITIES AS A PARTY LEADER. 

"We have said," writes Mr. Wemyss Reid,* 
"that Mr. Disraeli was a great party leader. To 
party leadership, in the ordinary acceptation of 
the term, Mr. Gladstone can lay no claim. Mr. 
Gladstone has many of the best qualities of a great 
leader. Like Mr. Disraeli, he can inspire on the 
part of his followers a high degree of personal 
enthusiasm. Out of doors he has a still greater 
command over the popular feeling than Mr. Dis- 
raeli ; nor is that fact to be accounted for by any 
question of politics. For while Mr. Disraeli's 
qualities, however much they may be admired by 
cultivated men of all political opinions, are ' caviare 
to the general,' Mr. Gladstone's are essentially 
popular. He has the passion, the enthusiasm, the 
fluency of speech, the apparent simplicity of action 
which are so dearly loved by the multitude. His 
name can be made a tower of strength for his 
party ; it might be adopted as the watchword or 
the rallying cry of a nation. 

" But in the House of Commons he finds the 
task of leading a majority one which is almost be- 
yond his grasp, and in which he is only saved from 
the most serious blunders by the watchfulness 

* In his " Cabinet Portraits." 



228 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

of friends and colleagues. Partly, this is un- 
questionably due to the fact that he is incapable 
of making any allowances for the weaknesses of 
his fellow creatures. He has great strength of his 
own ; his soul, when he is engaged on any ques- 
tion of importance, is filled with an earnestness 
which is almost heroic, and he sees only one road 
to the end at which he aims — the shortest. Under 
these circumstances, he is incapable of understand- 
ing how any of his followers, who share his creed, 
and profess to be anxious to reach the same goal 
as himself, can demur to the path which he is 
taking. For their individual crotchets he makes 
no allowances, and he is especially regardless of 
the unwillingness of the English gentleman to be 
driven in any particular direction. 

" It is curious to see as the result of this how 
much needless irritation he succeeds at times in 
causing among his followers. Over and over 
again the Liberal clubs have rung with complaints 
of his overbearing manner, of his temper' — it 
ought, rather, to be * temperament ' — of his want 
of consideration for the ideas, the foibles, the pre- 
judices of the rank and file of his party. The 
general result is that he makes a bad leader. In- 
deed, it would be safer to say that he does not 
lead at all, in the common sense of the word ; 
others lead for him. He has another weakness, 
which is strangely irritating, not perhaps to the 
majority, but, at any rate, to a very considerable 



QUALITIES AS A PARTY LEADER. 229 

minority, of his followers ; we mean his abhor- 
rence of such a thing as humor. He makes jests 
himself at times, and occasionally they are good 
ones ; but they are grim and ponderous jokes, 
such as one might expect to circle round the 
board of a funeral feast rather than in any livelier 
assemblage, and the fierceness of manner with 
which they are delivered, and the supernatural 
solemnity of his countenance, as he makes them, 
render it necessary that the man who ventures to 
laugh at them should have a bold heart. As to 
such a thing as humor in others, he can not see it. 
More than once, when the House has been con- 
vulsed with laughter, at some exquisite bit of 
' chaff ' — to use a slang phrase — on the part of 
Mr. Disraeli, he has risen, and in the most grave 
and emphatic manner replied seriously to the 
lively sarcasm of his foe. 

*^ Then there is his ' temper. ' We hear a great 
deal — as it seems to us a great deal more than we 
ought to hear — about * Gladstone's temper. ' Even 
Liberal journals and Liberal members are fond of 
dwelling upon his hasty temper, and it seems to 
be taken for granted that the Prime Minister is 
one of those peevish and passionate men who make 
life a misery to those around them. The clubs 
dwell with much emphasis upon his arrogance and 
his domineering disposition ; and every little out- 
burst of strong feeling which he displays is spoken 
of as though it were nothing more than that very 



230 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

contemptible thing — a fit of anger. As we have 
already said, it ought, it appears to us, to be Mr. 
Gladstone's temperament rather than his temper 
that should be held accountable for these occa- 
sional outbursts of which so much is made by 
those around him. That he is one of those finely 
strung men of very tender susceptibilities, to 
whom the prick of a pin is more torture than the 
heaviest of downright blows, is certain. Equally 
certain is it that he has a will of enormous 
strength — Lord Salisbury has spoken of it in Par- 
liament as an ^arrogant will,' and it is undoubt- 
edly in the Cabinet a dominant will — that he 
holds, in a very considerable degree, the doctrine 
that the end justifies the means, and that he is 
in the heat of debate the victim of an impetuosity 
which sometimes hurries him into false positions, 
from which he is generally too proud to retreat 
afterward. 

*' But against these serious failings of tempera- 
ment must be set the enthusiasm which is also 
a part of his nature, and which, when he has 
really worked himself up to boiling-point on a 
great question, he can always communicate to his 
followers ; and the resolution which enables him 
to persevere with any work he has undertaken in 
the face of difficulties which would overwhelm 
most men. As a minister in charge of a great 
measure, one to which he has devoted the whole 
strength of his wonderful miud, he has not an 



QUALITIES AS A PARTY LEADER. 231 

equal. When Mr. Gladstone gives himself with 
all his earnestness — and he is the most earnest 
man now living in England — to a great public 
question, he shows a knowledge, an ability, a 
power in handling it, a grasp at once of the great- 
est principles and of the smallest details, a readi- 
ness to comprehend the objections raised to par- 
ticular provisions of the bill, a fertility of resources 
in providing remedies for those objections, which 
no other English statesman can pretend to pos- 
sess." 

To a similar effect is the testimony of Mr. H. 
W. Lucy. Mr. Gladstone, he remarks, **has al- 
ways been at a disadvantage as compared with his 
great rival in respect of personal manner. He 
was always too much in earnest to pay a just 
measure of attention to those little courtesies 
which count for much even in the government of 
an empire on which the sun never sets. It would 
perhaps be an exaggeration to say that Lord Bea- 
consfield is never in earnest ; but it is unques- 
tionable that he is never so much exhausted by 
earnestness that he forgets to pay those petty 
homages which cost so little, and to the leader of 
a party are worth so much. Mr. Gladstone's gaze 
was fixed far above heads of mortal men, and the 
natural consequence was that when he moved 
about his daily work he frequently knocked up 
against his own friends and trod upon their 
corns," 



232 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

XVIII. 

QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 

Speaking of those "practical politicians" 
who are at no pains to conceal their contempt for 
the 'literary man " — a class not unknown even 
in England — Mr. Henry Dunckley says: **As a 
matter of fact, literature has strong affinities with 
politics, and when pursued seriously helps to 
make a man a * practical politician.' For litera- 
ture does not concern itself with abstract specula- 
tion. It does not even profess to search for truth. 
Its material is written thought. Its object is to 
understand the ideas which have come down to us 
from many generations of thinkers, and to pay 
meet honor to what is best. The man of letters 
lives in communion with the representative men 
of every age who have left their thoughts in 
books ; and so long as mind governs the world 
and thought molds action, so long will literature 
lie close to politics. There is a sense in which 
the man of letters may be the most practical of 
politicians. He comes fresh to the problems of 
politics, and is disposed to regard them simply as 
problems to be solved. He is apt to fall in with 
the more ardent temper of the age, and to be 
willing to cut the knot which can not be untied. 
As a man of ideas he is fertile in expedients. 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 233 

Hence, at revolutionary eras, or on those rare oc- 
casions when some upas-tree has to be cut down, 
there is no more formidable foe to Conservatism 
than a political man of letters." 

The truth of this is very strikingly exempli- 
fied in the career of Mr. Gladstone, who has al- 
ways found the field of politics and the domain 
of letters lying closely contiguous to each other. 
In both he has labored industriously and garnered 
a generous harvest ; and if he has carried into 
literature the practicality of aim and sanity of 
judgment that come from familiarity with the 
great affairs of men and nations, his political ora- 
tory has gained much in variety and opulence 
from his knowledge and practice of literature. 

The more important literary productions of 
Mr. Gladstone have been dealt with elsewhere, in 
connection with the narrative of his life ; but be- 
sides these, which required separate mention, he 
has contributed copiously to the periodicals of the 
day, and has delivered many addresses on topics 
connected with art, literature, and education. 
Within the past year the whole of his miscella- 
neous writings — with the exception of essays of a 
strictly controversial and classical kind — have 
been collected in a uniform edition under the title 
of " Gleanings of Past Years." 

They fill seven volumes, of which the first is 
entitled '' The Throne and the Prince Consort ; 
the Cabinet and the Constitution," and contains 



234 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

no fewer than four articles on the life and charac- 
ter of the Prince Consort, two of them being based 
upon Mr. Martin's *'Life." These are followed 
by three papers on the County Franchise, being 
a response to the deliverances of Mr. Lowe upon 
this subject. The last essay in the volume is the 
one entitled "Kin Beyond Sea," which aroused 
such controversy both in this country and in Eng- 
land on its appearance originally in the " North 
American Review" for September, 1878. The 
second volume comprises essays of a personal and 
literary character, and is the most interesting of 
the series. In it are excellent critical papers on 
Macaulay, Tennyson, Blanco White, Dr. Norman 
Macleod, and Giacomo Leopardi, and an admira- 
ble address on Wedgwood, originally delivered at 
Burslem, Staffordshire, on the occasion of laying 
the foundation stone of the Wedgwood Institute. 
The latter is especially valuable as showing Mr. 
Gladstone's knowledge of and sympathy for art. 
The third volume contains essays of an historical 
and speculative character, the most important of 
them being a series on Ecce HomOy which are 
written with eloquence and power. The next 
volume ("Foreign Essays") deals with topics of 
recent or current interest in politics and states- 
manship, and contains, besides the letters to Lord 
Aberdeen on the Neapolitan prisons, articles on 
"Germany, France, and England," on "The 
Hellenic Factor in the Eastern Problem," on 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 235 

Montenegro, and on ^'Aggression in Egypt and 
Freedom in the East." The remaining volumes 
consist of essays mostly (but not exclusively) of 
a theological or ecclesiastical character. In the 
seventh volume are the Chapter of Autobiography, 
hitherto referred to, the admirable Inaugural Ad- 
dress delivered to the students of Edinburgh Uni- 
versity in 1860, and the address on " The Place 
of Ancient Egypt in the Providential Order." 

The most satisfactory estimate of these mis- 
cellaneous writings, and of Mr. Gladstone's quality 
as a man of letters, that we have seen, appeared 
a few months ago in '* Eraser's Magazine," and 
from this article we shall quote the more impor- 
tant passages : 

" Perhaps the first, and in some respects the 
highest, intellectual quality which marks these 
essays, is their varied energy of thought. There 
is no sign of weariness, of languor, or even re- 
pose in them, but everywhere the throb of a fresh, 
powerful, and unsated intellectual impulse. A 
genuine life of thought moves in them all. It is 
impossible for any serious reader not to be touched 
by their depth and force of sentiment, and the 
frequent vigor and eloquence, if also the occas- 
ional clumsiness and complexity, of their lan- 
guage. Mr. Gladstone writes always as from a 
full mind, in this respect alone taking at once a 
higher position than that of many contemporary 
writers. It is no conventional or professional 



236 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

impulse that animates his pen ; he has always 
something to say, and which he is eager to say ; 
he is so moved by his thought, whatever it is, 
that he brings all the forces of his mind to bear 
upon it. He never dallies, seldom pauses over a 
subject ; still less does he, after a prevalent mod- 
ern fashion, touch it all round with satiric and 
half -real allusion, as if it were rather a bore to 
touch it at all, and not of much consequence 
what conclusion the writer or the reader came to, 
after all. There is not a trace of persiflage in 
any of the essays. There is, in fact, far too little 
play of mind — too much of the Scotch quality of 
weight. It is well to be earnest. In this respect 
it is nothing less than a relief to turn from the 
silly and inconsecutive sentence-making of much 
of our present writing to Mr. Gladstone's moving 
and powerful pages. But they are frequently 
fatiguing from the very weight and hurry of their 
energy. And if sentence-making in itself be but 
a poor business with which no man will occupy 
himself who has much to say, it is yet, so far, an 
indispensable element in all literature. And Mr. 
Gladstone, as we may have occasion to point out 
before we close, too often neglects it. He lacks 
the special instinct of style, or the repressive art 
which restricts the outflow of energy in all the 
highest writers, as indeed in every creation of 
genius — withdrawing the glowing conception 
within the *'mold of form." But of this again. 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 237 

In the mean time it is not the negative, but the 
positive aspect of his writings that we are no- 
ticing. 

" The quality of energy characteristic of Mr. 
Gladstone's essays is impressed on them from the 
first. It is perhaps their chief literary quality 
to the last — and the volumes before us cover a 
period of not less than thirty-five years. It would 
have been better in some respects if the author 
had contented himself with a chronological ar- 
rangement. But there are few writers who less 
stand in need of being estimated chronologically. 
In expounding the ^Evangelical Movement' in 
1879, he is very much the same expositor as 
when he dealt at length with ' The Present As- 
pect of the Church' in 1843. If in the former 
paper his attitude is different, he yet speaks in 
both from the same background of substantial 
conviction. His views are as fully formed in the 
one case as in the other. Nothing is more re- 
markable, in fact, in these essays than the im- 
movable background of opinion which everywhere 
crops through them. Whatever may have been 
the vacillations of Mr. Gladstone's political career, 
there has been but little change in his more in- 
ward and higher thought. We do not know any 
other writer of the day who has remained more 
steadfast through a generation and a half to the 
same central principles. 

" Nor is it merely that there is little change 



238 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

or growth in his central thought ; there is but 
little change in his manner as a writer. He writes 
with the same rhetorical fullness in the end as in 
the beginning — with the same energy and glow, 
and excessive, at times inelegant, movement. If 
there is any difference in this respect, it is cer- 
tainly not in favor of the papers of his more 
mature years. For with the same force and inten- 
sity of thought these papers are, upon the whole, 
less duly proportioned, less harmonized. More 
literary care, apparently, has been taken in the 
preparation of the remarkable series which fill 
the fruitful decade following 1843 than in some 
of his recent productions. We would notice for 
their literary characteristics the articles on * Blanco 
White,' in 1845, and on * Leopardi,' in 1850 ; 
and we must add to these, although of later 
origin, the articles on ' Tennyson ' and * Ma- 
caulay.' If any one wishes to see Mr. Gladstone 
at his best as a man of letters, let him read these 
articles, especially the two last mentioned. They 
are intense and powerful, radiant with all his 
peculiar energy of conception ; but they are also 
stamped by a special impress of literary form. 
The vivid and impetuous march of thought is 
held within bounds. The writer is less swept 
along by the force of his ideas ; the rein is laid 
upon them, and they beat step to a more har- 
monious pace. . . . 

**Next to the energy of Mr. Gladstone's 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 239 

writing in an ascending scale may be mentioned 
its constant elevation and frequent ideality of 
sentiment. On the descending scale his energy is 
apt to pass into sheer intensity and rhetoric. The 

* Never, never, never,' which he borrows from 
Lord Chatham, and would even emphasize in its 
repetition, is the note of a manner which rises 
naturally to vehemence, and the strong rush of 
words sometimes passes off into shrillness. He can 
realize for the time little or nothing but the idea 
which moves him, and it expands and glows till, 
like an illuminated cloud, it fills the whole heaven 
of his thought and casts on his page an intense 
shadow ' dark with excessive bright.' But his 
manner of thought, if rhetorical and vehement, 
is always elevated. It never sinks to frivolity, 
seldom to commonplace ; it ranges at a high level. 

* Whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in 
virtue amiable or grave ; whatsoever hath passion 
or admiration in all the changes of that which is 
called fortune from without or the wily subtilties 
and reflexes of men's thoughts from within' — 
such things are the main haunt of our author's 
literary spirit, and his pen aspires to describe 
them with a ' solid and treatable smoothness.' 
Even Milton had no higher conception of the 
business of literature than he has, and his example 
so far, no less than in the thoroughness and energy 
of his work, is of special value. For that we are 

* moving downward ' in this respect, if not in 



240 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

others, can hardly be doubted. Lightness of 
touch, if it be also skillful and delicate, is a dis- 
tinct merit. It saves trouble. It attracts casual 
readers who might otherwise not read at all. It 
soon passes, indeed, into a trick, and becomes the 
feeble if pointed weapon of every newspaper 
critic. But when to lightness of touch are added 
lightness of subject and frequent emptiness of all 
higher thought, the descent becomes marked in- 
deed ; and literature, from being the lofty pursuit 
imaged by the great Puritan, becomes a mere 
pastime in no degree higher than many others. 

** Mr. Gladstone never descends to the flippant 
facility to which the mere passions and gossip of 
the hour are an adequate theme. He not only 
deals in all his essays with worthy subjects, but 
he always deals with them in a worthy manner, 
so far at least as his tastes and sympathies are 
concerned. If by no means always true or just 
in his judgments, it is yet always what is noble 
in character, and pure and lofty in sentiment, and 
dignified in feeling that engages his admiration. 
His pen fastens naturally on the higher attributes 
of mind and action in any figure that he draws ; 
and this too, as in the sketches of Lord Macaulay, 
the Prince Consort, and Dr. Norman Macleod, 
where it is plain he has only an imperfect sym- 
pathy with the type of character as it comes from 
his pen. On this very account these portraits are 
the more interesting, and test more directly 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 241 

the genuineness of his high capacity of appre- 
ciation. . . . 

*^ We have spoken of the ideality, no less than 
the elevation of sentiment, which frequently marks 
Mr. Gladstone's ^Gleanings.' He is not merely 
attracted by what is noble and great in sentiment, 
and all the fairer traits of our higher nature, but 
there is an elevated and poetic glow at times in 
such criticisms as those on Leopard i and Tenny- 
son, which carry their author beyond the mere 
critical sphere, and show that he is capable of 
being touched to finer issues. As a student of 
Homer and Dante, he is familiar with the loftiest 
and richest poetic ideals ; and these ideals have 
evidently sunk deep into his mind. They have 
bred in him a kindred enthusiasm, and, what is 
more, an enthusiasm which is capable of being 
fired alike by the heroism of Hellenic and the 
humilities of Christian virtue. He is entirely free 
from the classical furore which has been rampant 
in many quarters of late, and whose craze is a re- 
turn to mere pagan ideals. Unlike Leopard i and 
the pessimist school, which may be said to date 
from him, he has fed his genius ^ on the Mount of 
Zion ' not less than ^ on the Mount of the Par- 
thenon,' ' by the brook of Cedron ' no less than ' by 
the waters of Ilissus.' While recognizing the 
prophetic element in Homer, and enraptured by 
his exquisite creations — and no one has described 
them with a more vivid and brightly tinctured 
16 



242 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

pencil — he yet bows before the higher prophetic 
genius of Isaiah, and sees in the marvelous ideals 
of Christian poets, from Dante to Tennyson, a 
more perfect bloom of the human mind and 
character. . . . 

*^ But we must draw this paper to a close with 
a special glance at Mr. Gladstone's literary style. 
It is powerful, flexible, and elaborately if not 
gracefully expressive. It has all the vigor and 
swell of the substance of his thought. But, just 
as he often seems to be thinking on his legs and 
casting forth in an impetuous cataract the current 
of his ideas, so does his style move with uneasy, 
and swaying, and often too vehement force — a 
force always more or less rhetorical, often pictured 
and eloquent, but sometimes singularly clumsy, 
and seldom facile or delicate. Yet he surprises 
the reader at times by a happy figure, touched 
lightly and beautifully, as when he says of the 
confidential outpourings of Bishop Patteson, in 
his letters to his sister at home, that they were 
^ like flowers caught in their freshness, and per- 
fectly preserved in color and in form.' 

**We confess to having formed a higher idea 
than we had of Mr. Gladstone's powers as a mere 
writer by an attentive perusal of these * Glean- 
ings.' The first impression one gets of his style 
is disappointing. It looks fatiguing. It does not 
invite, nor does it readily lead the reader along, 
even when he has yielded to the impulse and felt 



QUALITIES AS AN AUTHOR. 243 

the fasciiijition of a strong mind. But at last it 
lays hold of the attention. We are caught in its 
sweep, and made to feel that we are in the hands 
of a master who knows his subject and will not 
let us go till he has brought us to some share of 
his own knowledge. We may feel not unfre- 
quently that he is far more subtile than true, more 
ingenious in theory than penetrating in insight, 
more intent on making out a case than in going 
to the root of a difficulty ; that he is conventional 
rather than critical, and traditional where he 
ought to be historical ; still, there is the glow of 
an intense genius everywhere, and the splendor 
of a rhetoric which often rises into passion and 
never degenerates into meanness. ... If we are 
to. estimate writing not merely by the momentary 
pleasure it gives, but by the elevation and moral 
as well as mental stimulus it imparts, we must 
attach a high value to many of Mr. Gladstone's 
essays. It would be difficult to say how far they 
may survive as monuments of his literary genius. 
They are more likely to do so, we believe, than 
his Homeric speculations, labors of love and 
special knowledge as these are. But, whatever 
may be their fate, they are remarkable and mar- 
velously interesting as products of literary de- 
votion and ambition in a mind of intense activity, 
amid the pauses of a great public career." 



244 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

XIX. 

PERSONAL TRAITS. 

In" the case of a living man it is not possible if 
we would (nor would it be justifiable if we could) 
to make those intimate personal revelations which 
constitute the chief charm of biography ; and Mr. 
Gladstone, though he has lived, as it were, in the 
full blaze of publicity, has been singularly success- 
ful in protecting his private and domestic life 
from the intrusions of vulgar curiosity. For this 
very excellent reason, therefore, the present chap- 
ter must necessarily be somewhat meagre and 
inadequate. 

Of Mr. Gladstone's personal appearance when, 
at the age of twenty-nine, he was first getting his 
feet firmly planted upon the ladder of fame, we 
have already given a sketch in Chapter III. Of 
the impression which in his later years he makes 
upon the beholder, Mr. T. W. Higginson gives the 
following interesting glimpse : ** When an Amer- 
ican, on visiting the House of Commons for the 
first time, studies with eagerness the face of the 
great Liberal statesman, his first impression must 
be, I should think, not so much ' How fine ! how 
intellectual ! ' as * how un-English ! how Amer- 
ican ! ' Mr. Disraeli himself, though far remoter 
from the prevailing English type, is hardly more 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 245 

distinctly separated from it than is Mr. Gladstone. 
The more highly charged nervous organization, 
the greater sensitiveness, the mobility, the subtlety 
of mind that we habitually attribute, with or with- 
out reason, to the American type — these all are 
visible, at the very first glance, in him. For my- 
self, on the only occasion when I had the honor 
of meeting Mr. Gladstone in his own house, I was 
haunted throughout the interview with an increas- 
ing resemblance to another face and voice, till at 
last it almost seemed that it was Ralph Waldo 
Emerson with whom I was talking." 

Still more vivid is the following passage from 
an English writer who some years ago described the 
persomiel of the Gladstone Government : ^' When 
Mr. Gladstone first entered the House of Com- 
mons, in the heyday of his youth, his looks earned 
for him the sobriquet, which he preserved in effect 
for some years afterward, of * Handsome Glad- 
stone.' The handsome looks are gone, but it is a 
noble face for all that — a nobler countenance than 
it was then in its early bloom and freshness. 
Lined with thought ; paled by years of toil ; the 
dark hair thinned ; the dark eyes caverned under 
brows habitually contracted — it is essentially the 
face of a senator, one of the ^Patres Conscripti.^ 
And there are subtle traits of character, readily 
enough discernible at a glance by those who care 
to look for them, subtle though they are, in those 
nervous lineaments ; a blending of generosity and 



246 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

scorn in the play of the nostrils, an alternating 
severity and sweetness in the mobile mouth. It is 
a face betraying every emotion, concealing nothing 
— incapable of concealment. We speak of this as 
of something not by any means to a debater's, and 
still less to a party leader's advantage. It is a 
very considerable and perpetual disadvantage tc 
Mr. Gladstone. He ^ wears his heart upon his 
sleeve, for daws to peck at.' He will visibly 
writhe under an ungenerous taunt while it is being 
uttered. His visage darkens with indignation 
while his adversary is yet speaking. " 

And Mr. Wemyss Reid says : '' Mr. Gladstone's 
face differs strangely from that of his great rival. 
It is the most mobile and expressive countenance 
in the House of Commons ; it can no more con- 
ceal the thought flitting through the brain behind 
it than the mirror can refuse to reflect the figure 
placed before it ; it is incapable of reserve or of 
mystery ; hope, fear, anxiety, exultation, anger, 
pleasure, each of these in turn is ' writ large ' upon 
it, so that the spectator watching it closely can 
read in it, as in a book, the varying thoughts and 
feelings of him to whom it belongs. And the face 
is in the highest degree characteristic of the man. 
There never was a statesman more impulsive than 
the present Prime Minister ; never one who took 
less pains to hide the workings of his mind from 
those around him, or who was more determined to 
wear his heart upon his sleeve. His openness in 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 247 

this respect is at once his fault and his virtue. It 
is an error in any man to whom are committed 
great destinies, and the policy of a mighty nation, 
and we can not wonder that his critics should often 
have complained of it. But it has at the same 
time redeemed not a few of the mistakes and incon- 
sistencies of his career, and has given the world 
evidence of the fact that, however impulsive 
and at times imprudent he may be, he is at least 
thoroughly sincere, even in his most impulsive 
actions. " 

For many years past Mr. Gladstone's residence, 
when not in London, has been at Hawarden, a 
property which came to him through his wife. 
"Hawarden Castle," says Mr. Lucy, "is charm- 
ingly situated on the estuary of the Dee. It was 
for a long time the property of the Stanley family, 
but after the execution of the Earl of Derby, in 
1651, it was purchased by Sergeant Glynne, who 
seems to have held the scales of justice so evenly 
that he was made Lord Chief Justice by Cromwell, 
and knighted by Charles II. The entrance lodges 
are about six miles from Chester, and one mile 
from the castle. The road through the park is 
open to the public, and is of singular beauty. The 
castle is about a century old, but was remodeled 
in 1809, the year when Mr. Gladstone was born, 
and a Tudor character, as the style was then under- 
stood, was given to it. Hawarden Church is a 
large and very fine example of the architecture of 



248 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

the early part of the sixteenth century, though 
some parts appear to be considerably older ; but it 
suffered from a fire comparatively recently, and a 
great part of it has been rebuilt. The rectory is 
one of the most valuable in the kingdom, and is 
held by a son of Mr. Gladstone's, who, if the tes- 
timony of the very extensive parish is to be relied 
on, is as hard-working and simple in his way of 
life as ever Goldsmith's country parson was. The 
Hawarden estates, which extend for some miles 
along the estuary of the Dee, contain many land- 
scapes of great beauty, but, though easily accessi- 
ble, they are little visited by artists or tourists. 
In the park are the remains of the ancient resi- 
dence : some of the foundations are of great anti- 
quity. It was granted by William the Conqueror 
to his nephew, Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, and 
it conferred the title of Earl of Chester upon the 
royal family. Some of the remains would seem to 
indicate the architecture that prevailed in Henry 
IPs time." 

Mr. Gladstone's study at Hawarden is a hand- 
some room crammed with books, busts, pictures, 
and other bric-a-hrac, and having ivy-hung win- 
dows commanding a beautiful prospect. His 
table is always covered with manuscripts, and his 
chairs heaped with newspapers. " The extent of 
Mr. Gladstone's daily intellectual labors," says 
Mr. Smith, *^ has been matter of very general 
surprise. That which he has accomplished was, 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 249 

indeed, only possible under strict rule and method. 
From his earliest years of study each day has seen 
fulfilled its due share of work. At Oxford he was 
an exception to undergraduate life, and * did not 
break off his morning studies at the regulation 
luncheon hour of one o'clock. It mattered not 
where he was, in college rooms or in country 
mansion ; from 10 A. M. to 2 P. M. no one ever 
saw William Ewart Gladstone. He was locked 
up with his books. From the age of eighteen 
to the age of twenty-one he never missed these 
precious four hours except when he was traveling. 
And his ordeal in the evening was not less severe. 
Eight o'clock saw him once more engaged in a 
stiff bout with Aristotle, or plunged deep in the 
text of Thucydides.' The habit of assimilating 
knowledge has been constant with him, in all 
places and at all seasons, from the first day of his 
college life until now. He has always been an 
early man, and — quoting now from an interesting 
article which appeared shortly after Mr. Glad- 
stone's resignation of the Liberal leadership — 
* since his retirement in Flintshire, he is, if pos- 
sible, earlier than before. Shortly after eight 
o'clock in the morning he walks down to prayers 
in the village church. Early devotion and break- 
fast over, the remainder of the morning, till the 
gong sounds at two o'clock, is devoted to work — 
to reading, writing, meditation, or to the perform- 
ance of arithmetical feats which no Cabinet Min- 



250 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

ister has ever surpassed.' Luncheon over, there 
is more reading ; or, * if there be visitors in the 
house, pleasant gossip ; or, if the weather be 
tempting, long walks to be taken, or tough oaks 
to be hewn. Loving air and exercise, Mr. Glad- 
stone is a singularly temperate man in meat and 
drink. Still, he is only abstemious, not ascetic. 
A glass or two of claret at dinner, and sometimes 
a glass of port, that nectar of orators, satisfy his 
very moderate requirements for stimulant.' His 
recreation in retirement is such as befits a strong 
and muscular frame. Mr. Gladstone wields the 
axe with the skill of an experienced workman. 
* Sawing wood has long been known as an excel- 
lent exercise, but it is dull work compared with 
the pleasure of striking at a huge tree, putting 
out of question the possibility of mentally coup- 
ling with each well-aimed blow the destruction of 
a political opponent. In wood-cutting deshabille, 
so little does the lord of the soil look like himself 
that he has often been accosted by *^ practical" 
hands, and received, meekly as is his wont, a lesson 
from them, the practical man remaining all the 
while ignorant of the manner of man he was 
addressing. In his moments of mental and phys- 
ical relaxation, the Napoleon of oratory (whose 
heavy artillery is always brought up at the right 
moment) and the champion of amateur woodmen 
vanish into the genial host, whose high spirits 
break out at every moment, and who is never more 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 251 

rejoiced than when he can play a comedy part on 
his own or his son's lawn.' Further, it has been 
observed that the frank and free manner of Mr. 
Gladstone, his liberality in throwing open Hawar- 
den Park to the public, and the deep interest he 
takes in all local improvements, ' have made him 
one of the best beloved of English celebrities. On 
Sunday morning, as the bells of Hawarden Church 
ring out through the heavy autumn air, vigorous 
pedestrians may be observed marching up the hill, 
their dusty raiment and shiny countenances pro- 
claiming that their walk to church has been a 
long one. This determination toward Hawarden 
as a place of devotion is not owing to a dearth of 
churches in the neighborhood. There are churches 
at Mold and elsewhere, but in none of these are the 
lessons read in the sonorous tones of the ex- Premier 
of England.'" 

Mr. Smith informs us further that Mr. Glad- 
stone's personal charity is proverbial, and that 
his generosity has not been bounded by pecuniary 
limits. He is among those who believe in Chris- 
tianity as a living, vitalizing force in the individ- 
ual, and he has endeavored practically to illustrate 
its influence. He is always accessible to those who 
are in need of help and advice ; and it is stated 
that *'even when Prime Minister of England he 
has been found in the humblest houses, reading to 
the sick or dying consolatory passages of Scripture 
in his soft, melodious tones." His service to the 



252 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

State, too, has been marked by the same unself- 
ishness as his private life. *^ When Prime Min- 
ister he resisted a motion, for increase of salary in 
the House of Commons, and when he left office 
he sought for no pension, although the numerous 
claims upon him were understood to have com- 
pelled the sale of his very remarkable collection 
of valuable china and articles of vertu. . . . We 
have reason to believe that when he retired from 
office, and made an investigation into the condi- 
tion of his affairs, Mr. Gladstone discovered that 
the house in Carlton Terrace, which he had in- 
habited for eighteen years, was beyond his means. 
He therefore parted with it, and obtained a smaller 
house in Harley Street. This change from a 
roomy mansion to one comparatively humble 
entailed almost as a necessary consequence part- 
ing with his collections, though, as we have seen, 
this was also pai*t of the prudential plan. The 
loss of his collections — the gradual accumulation 
of years — must have been a great one, for his 
lively appreciation of art has not been confined to 
public addresses on that subject ; books, china, 
and pictures are treasures which he has ever re- 
garded with peculiar affection, and which he has 
always delighted to have around him in lavish 
profusion." 

Mr. Justin McCarthy thinks that the princi- 
pal defect of Mr. Gladstone's mind is ^'a lack of 
simplicity, a tendency to over-refining and super- 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 253 

subtle argument." And Mr. A. Hay ward says : 
**The extreme subtlety of his mind, while supply- 
ing him with an inexhaustible store of replies and 
rejoinders, caused him to rely too much on over- 
refined distinctions and on casuistical modes of 
reasoning. During Garibaldi's visit to London, 
it was suggested that a noble and richly jointured 
widow, who was much about with him, should 
marry him. To the objection that he had a wife 
living, the ready answer was, ^ Oh, he must get 
Gladstone to explain her away. ' " 

At the same time, neither this over-subtlety, 
nor his great change of political views, has ever 
induced any one seriously to question Mr. Glad- 
stone's sincerity and honesty of motive. Says Mr. 
McCarthy : ^' The common taunts addressed to 
public men who have changed their opinions 
were hardly ever applied to him. Even his ene- 
mies felt that the one idea always inspired him — 
a conscientious anxiety to do the right thing. 
None accused him of being one of the politicians 
who mistake, as Victor Hugo says, a weathercock 
for a flag. With many qualities which seemed 
hardly suited to a practical politician ; with a 
sensitive and eager temper, like that of Canning, 
and a turn for theological argument that as a rule 
Englishmen do not love in a statesman ; with an 
impetuosity that often carried him far astray, 
and a deficiency of those genial social qualities 
that go so far to make a public success in Eng- 



254 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

land, Mr. Gladstone maintained through the 
whole of his career a reputation against which 
there was hardly a serious cavil. The worst thing 
that was said of him was that he was too impul- 
sive, and that his intelligence was too restless. 
He was an essayist, a critic, a Homeric scholar ; 
dilettante in art, music, and old china ; he was a 
theological controversialist ; he was a political 
economist, a financier, a practical administrator 
whose gift of mastering details has hardly ever 
been equaled ; he was a statesman and an orator. 
No man could attempt so many things and not 
occasionally make himself the subject of a sneer. 
Tlie intense gravity and earnestness of Glad- 
stone's mind always, however, saved him from 
the special penalty of such versatility ; no sati- 
rist described him as not one but all mankind's 
epitome." 

According to Mr. Henry Dunckley, the most 
striking feature of Mr. Gladstone's character is 
expressed in the word force, power in action. 
** He received as a happy inheritance a larger 
stock than most men of what George Eliot de- 
scribes as 'solar energy.' He was born in and 
still inhabits a tropical clime, under the sun's 
*directer ray,' and a temperature which, with 
others, would pass for fever heat is his normal 
elevation. It is this that has made him what he 
is. But for this endowment, supposing all the 
rest of his intellectual character to have been the 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 255 

same, the result would have been widely different. 
His contemplative tendencies might liave led him 
to some pious retreat, where he would have medi- 
tated upon the problems of the universe and the 
mysteries of the Church ; or if he had taken to 
l)olitics, he might have been known as a culti- 
vated speaker, and have discharged with credit 
the duties of a Junior Lord of the Treasury, but 
he would never have become the foremost of Eng- 
land's living statesmen. With this blending of a 
contemplative spirit and a restless thirst for ac- 
tion, if he had lived in the Middle Ages he would 
probably have found his way to the cloister, with 
such men as Lanfranc and Anselm. He would 
have ruled his order, the monks would not have 
led a quiet life, and refractory monarchs and no- 
bles would have felt the weight of his censures. 
Having been born, happily for us, in the nine- 
teenth century, he found an appropriate sphere 
in politics, but the spiritual element asserts itself, 
penetrating and traversing his character in all di- 
rections, like seams of primitive granite. 

" This central fire of his nature affects every- 
thing. It gives its specific type to his imagina- 
tion, which seems to consist in the fusing of his 
ideas, so as to set all their associations free and 
leave them to course along with but little guid- 
ance, except that which they derive from their 
imperious affinities. They are sometimes his 
master ; they yield with reluctance to the disci- 



256 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

pline of * discrete thought. ' It seems as if, under 
his ardent gaze, they grew and glowed till they 
filled and inflamed the whole sphere of intellec- 
tual vision. The passion that has kindled them 
is for the time supreme, and will continue so till 
the flame is self-consumed. Ideas of this high 
temperature demand a diction of corresponding 
pitch, and they find it in a style which is at once 
stately and solemn, exuberant and rhythmical ; 
in imperial sentences which go circling round 
like the orreries of an astronomical lecture, each 
vanishing away into space, to be followed by an- 
other and another in endless succession, till the 
wondering spectator is more than half convinced 
by the mere spell of admiration. . . . But his 
most potent mastery over us is derived from the 
strength and the transparent honesty of his con- 
victions, and from the purity and elevation of his 
character, aided by the recollections which the 
sight of him awakens of a public career so blame- 
less, disinterested, and beneficent. His moral 
earnestness is the secret of his political growth. 
He has believed ardently and practiced sincerely, 
and so has found his way to better things. Hence 
it has come to pass that the rising hope of the 
stern and unbending Tories of fifty years ago, 
after a course of steadily augmenting luster, is to- 
day the bright and not yet setting star of pro- 
gress and reform." 

(8) 



APR 30 1907 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS^ 



021 953 738 4 




